Study of the performance of RSSI based Bluetooth Smart indoor positioning

Recently, there is a high interest for appropriate systems and methods to localize the position of people and their devices in indoor environments (e.g. home, office, hospital). From technical and economical points of view, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is one of the promising technologies in this field. This paper deals with the study of performances of this technology for these purposes. For the indoor localization, a received signal strength indication (RSSI) method is used. It was tested in ideal (anechoic chamber) and real (in the office) environment conditions. For the measurement campaign and evaluation of the obtained results a generic framework is proposed. Experimental results (simulation vs. measurement) show similar behaviour of the BLE technology in ideal (no signal reflection) and real (multipath propagation) transmission environments.