Bluetooth beacons positioning accuracy?

RE: Bluetooth beacons positioning accuracy?

Luis — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 06:58:58 GMT

Depends on what you exactly want to achieve. I worked on this matter a few years ago and it is quite difficult. Using bluetooth we got nice results in open spaces without obstacles, using very omnidirectional antenas, a very high broadcast frequency, knowing the relative orientation of each tracked object by a different method (IMU transmitted by BLE), and lots of filtering... and of course each unit was calibrated. As endnode said, very difficult to extend to commercial generic products. There are other solutions, take a look at the loco positioning system: store.bitcraze.io/.../indoor-explorer-bundle. Again, if you try them indoors and with obstacles around, things start to get crazy.

RE: Bluetooth beacons positioning accuracy?

endnode — Sat, 07 Oct 2017 13:29:47 GMT

Note that you can maybe get something in decimeter rage in laboratory as science paper but that won't use off-the-shelf BLE modules or beacons but rather combine several technologies (e.g. BLE + WiFi in 2.4GHz + UHF + sub-GHz or ultra-wide-band...) and have pretty expensive custom hubs (in hundreds or thousand USD range) in very close distance (like few meters from each other to build very dense grid). Impossible to commercialize in such form...

RE: Bluetooth beacons positioning accuracy?

endnode — Sat, 07 Oct 2017 13:26:20 GMT

Sub 10cm? Are you kidding? Google some B2B solutions for indoor positioning (for space optimizations, physical access control, airport navigation etc.) and you will see... not even these clowns claim more than 1m accuracy (and if they claim 1m it usually means in the lab whereas in the real complex buildings of office spaces or logistic halls/airports it's 2-3m in best).

RE: Bluetooth beacons positioning accuracy?

MikeLemon — Sat, 07 Oct 2017 11:35:51 GMT

aww that's disappointing but you sure there is no way to get a sub 10cm accuracy? I think I saw some where (might be youtube) that someone achieved an accuracy of 2 cm.

RE: Bluetooth beacons positioning accuracy?

endnode — Fri, 06 Oct 2017 20:02:11 GMT

Have you searched for the same Q&As on this forum? There are many and the conclusions from many people are roughly the same... accuracy without any special care will hardly be better then "is the object in this room or the next". There are of course methods how to make the system better, many academic papers, many commercial companies claiming sub 2m accuracy in almost real time BUT you need to understand that they have teams of 5-50 people working on it for 2-5 years, full time. Good luck.