Development of Indoor Positioning System for Critical Infrastructure Facilities

Indoor positioning of people can be used to collect statistics and optimize processes. However, unlike outdoor positioning, where most of the use cases utilize global satellite systems, indoor positioning is still one of the problems, which cannot be covered by a single solution and many different technologies with different characteristics are used to implement positioning systems. Internet of Things devices have had a great impact on the development of this field, but even now there is still a demand for low cost and accurate systems for positioning. This paper presents an analysis of existing technologies for creating systems for indoor positioning. Based on the analysis, a positioning system using Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons was selected and implemented. Existing algorithms for positioning were researched and the most versatile ones were selected. An experiment was conducted, and on its basis the peculiarities of BLE devices operation were revealed. An accuracy improvement method was proposed and tested, which takes these features into account and separates the processing of data from different packet transmission channels. The evaluation results based on the conducted tests showed that the proposed method together with the previously identified best practices can reduce the RMS error to less than 1 meter. The results of the conducted research can be further used in the implementation of positioning systems for critical infrastructure facilities such as hydroelectric power station “Krasnopolynskaya”. The paper contains 70 pages, 40 illustrations, 1 table, 2 appendices. The list of references includes 37 sources.