POUCET: A Multi-Technology Indoor Positioning Solution for Firefighters and Soldiers

A novel multi-technology indoor positioning system, Poucet, designed for military and firefighter operations, is introduced in this paper. A mobile agent, wearing a lightweight tracker, is located in real-time during indoor operations through a combination of outdoor stations and indoor beacons dropped by the agent on his way. Beacons and trackers integrate multiple radio positioning technologies, including Global Positioning System, (Long range Radio (LoRa 868MHz and 2.4 GHz), Ultrawide-band (UWB), and altimeters.Poucet’s distributed architecture is presented along with the main features of each of the technologies used. A multi-input fusion algorithm provides continuous and reliable positioning. We report experimental results obtained during benchmarks scenarios conducted by the French National Defense on the presented prototypes.