RAPOSI: Rapidly installable positioning system for indoor environments

RAPOSI is a radio-signal-strength based positioning system for indoor environments. Independent self-localization as well as centralized tracking of light-weight mobile devices is enabled. By omitting typically required a-priori scene analysis, set-up time is minimized. The positioning strategy is propagation-model based, retrieving and filtering radio-signal strength measurements from as many neighbouring reference points as possible and mapping them to distances. In order to increase reference-point densities, RAPOSI integrates several wireless technologies, namely 802.11 WLAN, Bluetooth and RFID. The results emphasize the benefits of hybridization, describe technology-specific neighbourhood-detection mechanisms, evaluate positioning algorithms, highlight advantages of adaptive position smoothing filters and finally evaluate overall positioning accuracy. Essentially important for the performance of the positioning system is the specific choice of the integrated RFID technology. The benefits of long-range semi-active UHF RFID tags that propagate their position and whose radio-signal-strength can be measured continuously, heavily account for the performance of RAPOSI.