Indoor positioning using circle expansion-based adaptive trilateration algorithm

The increasing availability of mobile devices with wireless communications capabilities has stimulated the growth of indoor positioning services. Indoor positioning is used to locate, in real time, devices’ positions for easy access. The indoor positioning, however, is challenging compared to outdoor positioning due to the large number of obstacles. Global positioning system is ideal for outdoor localization but fails in indoor environments with limited space. Recent development of the Internet of Things (IoT) has brought forth portable and cost-effective wireless technologies that can be used for indoor positioning. In this work, an adaptive trilateration algorithm based on received signal strength indicator (RSSI) was proposed. To assess the positioning accuracy of the proposed algorithm, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11n), ZigBee and LoRaWAN IoT technologies were used. Results show that the error performance is improved by 4% in BLE, 17% in ZigBee, 22% in Wi-Fi and 33% in LoRaWAN when compared to the existing related work.