Indoor Positioning with UWB Location Beacons

Indoor Location
1

Hi,

I am facing the below issue please let me know your suggestions.

Problem Statement:
As per the attached diagram, identify the position (P1 or P2) of a mobile device deterministically with respect to the beacons 1, 2 & 3.

image

As mentioned in the attached figure we are using proximity beacons Beacon1, Beacon2, Beacon3 separated by 1 meter distance and trying to get the position of the mobile placed either at position1 or position2 with 100% success rate.

What we tried:
We used proximity beacons to solve the above problem statement. We assumed that by finding distances of P1 from B1 and B2, we can perhaps identify the mobile’s location at P1 (and same for P2). But we are not able to get the accurate distance with respect to other beacons because of the cross talk happening between them.

What we want from you:
We have come across the Estimote location beacon with UWB on internet. We would like to try these beacons to achieve our goal as mentioned above.

How accurate would be the distance-replies from UWB beacon when two UWB beacons are separated by 1 meter distance and a mobile is kept at an arbitrary position in between them?How can we achieve this using beacons?

2

Have you tried our Indoor Location yet? We’re doing something similar to what you’ve shown here (cross-referencing signal from multiple beacons that we know the position of from a floor plan), and we’re scoring an average accuracy of about 1 m.

UWB is inch-level precise, so it would be extremely accurate, but there are two problems that make UWB-based positioning less practical that BLE-based positioning:

  1. Smartphones don’t have a UWB radio, but all smartphones have a BLE radio.
  2. UWB is not a low-energy technology, so it’s not fit for running for extended periods of time, especially in wireless beacons powered by tiny batteries. Our beacons can be powered externally via GPIO, but you lose the wireless aspect = ease and practicality of deployment.

We currently use UWB in our Location Beacons for beacon-to-beacon communication, to calculate distances between them and auto-generate a floor plan. (Floor plans are a huge pain if you’re trying to deploy Indoor in hundreds/thousands of venues.) It really is inch-level precise!