Protocol Development for Indoor Navigation using Bluetooth Device

Background: GPS based location measurement is not precise for indoor environment because satellite signals are getting attenuated and scattered by roof and wall. This can be achieved by a Bluetooth protocol developed for indoor navigation. Methods: In this paper an indoor navigation system using Bluetooth is proposed. Two Bluetooth devices used as positioning devices measure the Received Signal Strength (RSSI) of surrounding Bluetooth devices. Both the devices measure Received Signal Strength (RSSI) of a selected user device. These RSSI values are given to a raspberry Pi development board which acts as a processing unit in this system. In processing unit further processing is done by grid following method. There are three grids and nine points (spacing 1 m each) of grid following method finalized by performing repeated number of experiment. Findings: Raspberry Pi gives the location of surrounding device by comparing RSSI value obtained from grid following method during training phase and real time RSSI values obtained from two Bluetooth devices. This location is further plotted using GNUPLOT in raspberry Pi terminal and sent it to the user’s smartphone. This graph file is transferred on user’s smartphone by using USB Bluetooth dongle in a format of image.