Indoor Localization: A Cost-Effectiveness vs. Accuracy Study

Recognizing the occupants' movement and locations within a home is a basic functionality, underlying a variety of smart-home services, including energy management, ambient-environment control, and assistive-living services for seniors and people with disabilities. The outdoor-localization variant of the problem is effectively addressed with the use of GPS; however, GPS does not work well inside buildings, which makes the indoor-positioning problem a very active research topic. In this paper, we report on a study of the indoor-localization problem, relying on easy-to-deploy, inexpensive, BLE-enabled stickers and beacons and WiFi access points.