A cost-effective solution for pedestrian localization in complex indoor environment

In this paper, we have considered the problem of infrastructure-based indoor localization, where Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) technology based network infrastructures for Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) measurement are used. Our approach to localize the mobile node is based on the relative change in the RSSI values obtained from BLE network, provided the knowledge of certain area specific information. The main advantage of this approach is that even the large environmental changes in the working area creates very less effect on the localization results. A new RSSI smoothing algorithm is proposed in such a way that it reduces the effect of sudden environmental changes on RSSI values. We have also formulated an integer optimization problem, where path loss exponent is optimized subject to a given area specific information. Since this problem is Non-deterministic Polynomial-time Hard (NP-Hard), we have presented sub-optimal solution to this problem, which are far better than the state-of-the-art approaches presented in the literature. Our proposed approaches provide an accuracy of average error in distance of 1.162 meter.