Indoor Localization Using 802.11 WiFi and IoT Edge Nodes

The growing affordability and power of the Internet of Things (IoT) technology are enabling researchers to find solutions to problems in all aspects of life. One of these applications is health-care facilities where medical doctors and other medical staff members are in an environment that often needs to locate at moments a patient or other health specialists. In this paper, we propose a solution for the Localization of health Center Assets Through an IoT Environment (LoCATE) system, which allows tracking patients and medical staff in near real time. LoCATE makes use of the current 802.11 wireless networks within a health-care facility and edge node technology as its tracking technique. The edge nodes continuously communicate with the infrastructure's wireless network Access Points (APs)in a nonintrusive manner. The data, collected from the APs by the edge nodes, is processed by a calculation algorithm based on the signal strength to locate the person in possession of the edge node within a reasonable range of variability. We also address privacy and security concerns regarding the system and the proposed solution. Our solution shows accuracy and reliability in locating the nodes as well as cost efficiency and ease of protability.