To Wireless Fidelity and Beyond - CAPTURE, Extending Indoor Positioning Systems

The benefits of context aware computing and\ud specifically the context that location can provide to applications\ud and systems has been heavily documented in recent times.\ud Moreover the move from traditional outdoor localization\ud solutions to the indoor arena has seen a dramatic increase in\ud research into this area. Most of this research has surrounded the\ud problem of positioning accuracy, with attempts to solve this using\ud a myriad of technologies and algorithms. One of the problems\ud that seems to be somewhat overlooked is the issue of coverage in\ud an indoor localization solution. The mostly unobstructed views of\ud the Global Positioning System (GPS) which requires a mere 30\ud satellites to provide global coverage never had these problems.\ud The dearth of literature around this issue in the outdoor arena is\ud testament to this fact. Unfortunately unobstructed views are not\ud something that can be achieved in most indoor environments and\ud economical as well as physical barriers can prevent the\ud installation of an infrastructure to achieve total coverage. In this\ud paper we propose a solution to this issue of indoor coverage by\ud deploying a solution to extend the range of a positioning system -\ud Cooperatively Applied Positioning Techniques Utilizing Range\ud Extension (CAPTURE). CAPTURE provides a system to locate\ud devices that cannot be reached by an in-house location based\ud system. It presents a unique contribution to research in this field\ud by offering the ability to utilize devices that currently know their\ud location within a Location Based Solution (LBS), to help evaluate\ud the position of unknown devices beyond the range capacity of the\ud LBS. Effectively extending the locating distances of an Indoor\ud LBS by utilizing the existing mobile infrastructure without the\ud requirement for additional hardware. CAPTURE uses the\ud Bluetooth radios on mobile devices to estimate the distance\ud between devices, before inserting these range estimates into a\ud trilateration algorithm to ascertain position. CAPTURE has been\ud tested through experiments carried out in a real world\ud environment, proving the capacity to provide a solution to the\ud ranging issue