Indoor Localization Accuracy of Major Smartphone Location Apps

NIST carried out comprehensive testing in five large buildings to compare the accuracies of Fused Location Provider (FLP) Application Programming Interface (API) for Android phones and Core Location running on iPhones. The testing was done under various mobility modes using the performance metrics provided in the international standard ISO/IEC 18305. This paper presents the results of these evaluations for horizontal, vertical, and 3D errors. Even though in some cases and respects Core Location is better than FLP, it can be said that overall FLP has better accuracy than Core Location, at least in the buildings we used for testing. While Core Location consistently provides location estimates at a fast rate, FLP provides location estimates at a slower rate and sometimes it does not provide elevation information. The paper also compares the accuracy of FLP with that of the best Android app that won the PerfLoc Prize Competition organized by NIST for development of Android indoor localization apps.