Determining the Indoor Location of an Emergency Caller in a Multi-story Building

A method to determine the indoor location of a caller who uses a smartphone to call for emergency assistance in a multi-story building is described. The system uses the signals broadcast by an array of BlueTooth Low Energy iBeacons deployed in the building as input to a trilateration calculation. The method described could be applied to RF emitters other than BlueTooth, including WiFi access points. The results of experiments conducted in a live classroom building in which the iBeacons are deployed demonstrate 100% accurate floor identification and mean distance accuracies within 5 meters. The solution's multistory accuracy and its low cost in terms of money, data collection effort, and simplicity of the calculations demonstrate this as a reasonable solution to the problem of locating emergency callers in multistory buildings.