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Indoor Positioning Systems: Its Need, Benefits, and Technology Behind It

Updated: Jul 1, 2021

Geolocalization is the solution to various applications and services. IPS are essential to continue these services indoors where GPS systems are unreliable. Indoor Positioning Systems are integrated and deployed in homes, buildings, commercial spaces, including offices, hospitals, airports, shops, and hotels. IPS can interact with smart devices/ machines to present them with spatial context. This blog post will explain what IPS is, why we need IPS, the benefits indoor positioning technologies offer, and the technology behind Indoor Navigation.


What is an Indoor Positioning System?


An IPS is a system that locates one or more individuals and objects in an indoor setting. An IPS are often composed of a couple of different elements:

  • Anchors

  • location Tags

Anchors are devices placed in the building or a facility. At the same time, the location tag is carried by the individual or article whose position is of interest.


Why do we require Indoor Positioning Systems?


Real-time information of the position of people or objects has grown essential for the deployment of services in multiple domains, including retail, logistics, tourism, urban outlining, recreation activities, etc. The triumph of global positioning systems (GPS) and the mobile revolution have perpetually turned how we associate technology in business and our personal lives.

GPS cannot determine the location of an individual when they are inside a building or home. The reason behind this is because GPS technology utilizes the signals of satellites in orbit, which get seriously degraded when there is no direct visibility, making indoor location tracking difficult. Indoor navigation and location systems have emerged to satisfy this part to present position information in real-time in indoor settings.


What benefits indoor positioning technologies offer you?


Indoor Navigation helps keep the user's time and nerves by navigating conveniently to the needed point, regardless of the particular application. Therefore, indoor location systems and navigation apps are applied at airports, railway stations, dispensaries & hospitals, office buildings, and large shopping complexes.


Recreation and Sports stadiums, along with multi-functional arenas, additionally rely on Indoor positioning systems. In the tourism sector, mapping and positioning help offer Indoor Navigation on ships.


Exercising proximity functions, such as proximity marketing, the subjects can also be addressed at particular points via "push message," or specific content can be sent to them. For example, regarding exhibitors, the shop or any other store offers, or information concerning the technical equipment of the building. So indoor location technologies suggest you much more possibilities than just wayfinding.


What technology is behind Indoor Positioning?


The technical foundation of wayfinding is a permanent and persistent localization of the user. For this purpose, the house or foundation is equipped with several transmitters. The smartphone equipped with a similar application calculates its position on the basis of the signal strength of the transmitters. Smart Point uses Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) transmitters, known as beacons. The BLE technology is adequately accurate, extremely robust, and relatively inexpensive.


An accuracy of at least three to five meters can be guaranteed with beacons. In most states, however, a much more accurate location of up to a meter is accomplished. The precision relies heavily on the architectural conditions (building material, height, size of the installations, etc.) and the practice of the beacon planners. Here at Smart Point, we attain the most distinguished accuracy even in settings made entirely of steel.


An indoor positioning system often behaves essentially as a kind of location engine, vibrating in the background to pinpoint a device's location. The output of the engine is the coordinates (latitude, longitude, and floor number) of the related device. Most often, the coordinates require context to be of value, so an indoor map is valuable.

The coordinates from the Indoor Navigation Systems and the indoor map data evolve commonly in the application layer, where additional user features are combined to produce an excellent experience for the end-user.


Conclusion


These days, Indoor location systems have become inevitable in multi-story buildings, airports, alleys, parking garages, and underground locations. Diverse indoor positioning systems are depending on the nature of signals used. All of these systems have their constraints, and none of the alternatives is classic. We use SmartAddress, MicroMap, CityPlus, and AddressPlus technologies across all industries & services to present mission-critical RTML information.


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