A Comparison of Wireless Standards in IoT for Indoor Localization Using LoPy

Abstract

There are surplus applications in modern smart cities where localization of indoor environments is critical ranging from surveillance and trailing in smart structures to the localized wireless distribution of advertising content in shopping malls. These applications are only successful if a robust and cost-effective real-time system is developed for precise localization. Another aspect considered for indoor localization is power consumption. Recent wireless standards such as Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and LoRa consume less power which makes them a perfect candidate for indoor localization. This work aims to carry out an experimental evaluation which would help to decide which wireless standard i.e., Wi-Fi, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), and LoRa are most suitable for indoor localization. Experiments are carried out using trilateration in three multiple environments. RSSI is used to calculate the coordinates of a sensor node. Results obtained from the experiment show that Wi-Fi is most accurate with an average error of 0.54 m. LoRa is second most accurate with an average error of 0.62 m and BLE is the least accurate with an average error of 0.82 m. These results can be used to decide which wireless standard is best suited for indoor localization.

Keywords

• Indoor localization accuracy
• Internet of Things
• RSSI
• Wi-Fi
• Bluetooth low energy
• LoRaWAN