Indoor Localization in BLE using Mean and Median Filtered RSSI Values

Many forms of wireless connectivity such as Wi-Fi, cellular data, Zig bee, etc. exist in the fastest growing domain of wireless technology. However, one of the most important and popularly used wireless protocols is Bluetooth, which was originally designed for the solution of the wired mode of data transfer (RS232, UART). Indoor localization technology based on the latest avatar of Bluetooth protocols viz Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is used to address the inadequacies of global positioning systems in indoors such as buildings, offices, houses, etc. since people use to spend the majority of their time there. The use of BLE becomes significant as it is a power-efficient and low-cost technique. It provides 40 channels of 2MHz Bandwidth each with 3 advertising channels and 37 channels for data transfer. In this paper, a parameter based on the received signal power viz. The RSSI value is proposed to be used for efficient indoor localization applications using BLE technology. The problem of non-static values of RSSI due to its dependence on the surrounding environment is proposed to be overcome in this paper by stabilizing the received power using mean and median filters. The localization accuracy is enhanced through static values of RSSI obtained using both these filters.