Comparative Survey of Indoor Positioning Technologies, Techniques, and Algorithms

The user location information represents a core dimension as understanding user context is a prerequisite for providing human-centered services that generally improve quality of life. In comparison with outdoor environments, sensing location information in indoor environments requires a higher precision and is a more challenging task due in part to the expected various objects (such as walls and people) that reflect and disperse signals. In this paper, we survey the related work in the field of indoor positioning by providing a comparative analysis of the state-of-the-art technologies, techniques, and algorithms. Unlike previous studies and surveys, our survey present new taxonomies, review some major recent advances, and argue on the area open problems and future potential. We believe this paper would spur further exploration by the research community of this challenging problem space.