Improving trilateration for indoors localization using BLE beacons

Abstract

While the Global Positioning System (GPS) tends to be not useful anymore in terms of precise localization once one gets into a building, Low Energy beacons might come in handy instead. Navigating free of signal reception problems throughout a building when one has never visited that place before is a challenge tackled with indoors localization. Using Bluetooth Low Energy1 (BLE) beacons (either iBeacon or Eddystone formats) is the medium to accomplish that. Indeed, different purpose oriented applications can be designed, developed and shaped towards the needs of any person in the context of a certain building. This work presents a series of post-processing filters to enhance the outcome of the estimated position applying trilateration as the main and straightforward technique to locate someone within a building. A later evaluation tries to give enough evidence around the feasibility of this indoor localization technique. A mobile app should be everything a user would need to have within a building in order to navigate inside.