Finding Optimal BLE Configuration for Indoor Positioning with Consumption Restrictions

Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) fingerprinting has gained a lot of research effort in recent years due to flexibility in both beacons placement and configuration. Different works have addressed the effect of the configuration parameters, mainly the transmission power (Tx) and period (Ts), over positioning accuracy but not on the system lifespan and the trade-off between these two. In this work, different configurations of one, three and six slots have been tested over the same experimental setup. Positioning accuracy was obtained using different variations of the Weighted k-Nearest Neighbours (Wk-NN) algorithm, and the system lifespan was estimated using the actual current consumption and transmission mechanism for each configuration. Experimental results have shown that Tx and the number of slots can be adjusted to optimize this trade-off; meanwhile, changes in Ts worsen Wk-NN results more than in the other parameters, showing that the minimum Ts is always the best option.