Usability of open-source hardware based platform for indoor positioning systems

Abstract

The application of indoor location systems (also known as indoor positioning systems, IPS) has significantly increased in the past decade. Those systems find their role in the broad range of possible implementations, especially in the applications in the area of resource management and location tracking. Their applications can be in safety management, material, construction, and inventory management. Since, those systems are designed for indoor and closed areas where GPS, GLONASS, and other navigation systems are not applicable, a different approach should be used to determine the location. This paper presents a brief overview of indoor localization technologies and methods. The focus of this paper is on RSSI based methods for positioning. The contribution of this paper is in analyses of usability of platforms built on Arduino/Genuino development boards and similar devices and open-source hardware for usage in RSSI based indoor positioning systems. The presented platform is designed and evaluated with the two experiments, with two different technologies.

Keywords

• Open-source hardware
• Indoor positioning systems
• RSSI
• Resource management
• Location tracking