Range-free indoor positioning system using smartphone with bluetooth capability

This paper presents a range-free localization system using commercial smartphones with Bluetooth capabilities to investigate the feasibility of range-free localization for indoor positioning. In the range-free localization system, each smartphone periodically scans nearby Bluetooth enabled devices and sends the results to the localization server. The localization server collects the scanning results from smartphones for a short period and find their locations via range-free algorithms. We have developed an Android application for smartphones. In addition to the localization server, a monitoring unit has been developed to supervise the range-free localization system. The range-free localization system was tested in a real environment. The experimental results showed that 5 m accuracy is achievable via range-free localization.