Optimal Beacon Placement for Indoor Positioning Using Constraint Programming
Sven Löffler, Franz Kroll, Ilja Becker, Petra Hofstedt · 2022
Indoor location is a growing topic for hospitals, retirement homes and in case of emergency. For the resource efficient (indoor) positioning of mobile individuals an optimized distribution of the used sensors is necessary. The placement of beacons (sensors) in a building (indoor positioning) can be a difficult and laborious task, especially if done by hand. Multiple researchers already tried to tackle this problem using different algorithms and under the consideration of distinct use cases. However, none of the currently known methods incorporate constraint programming by using only Boolean variables. In this paper we tried to develop a new method for an efficient placement of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons in an indoor scenario. More specifically, we try to optimize the beacons for a trilateration algorithm used for indoor positioning. This algorithm requires that three beacons should be in range for every possible position in the building. In a next step the initially calculated beacon positions are further optimized. This is done by trying to reduce the number of beacons used. Afterwards we evaluate the quality of the beacon placements by comparing it against a manually optimized beacon placement and evaluating it in an existing building by checking the quality of multiple sample positions.