Design Space Exploration of a Multi-Model AI-Based Indoor Localization System

Sensors (Basel). 2022 Jan 12;22(2):570. doi: 10.3390/s22020570.

Abstract

In this paper, we present the results of a performance evaluation and optimization process of an indoor positioning system (IPS) designed to operate on portable as well as miniaturized embedded systems. The proposed method uses the Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) values from multiple Bluetooth Low-Energy (BLE) beacons scattered around interior spaces. The beacon signals were received from the user devices and processed through an RSSI filter and a group of machine learning (ML) models, in an arrangement of one model per detected node. Finally, a multilateration problem was solved using as an input the inferred distances from the advertising nodes and returning the final position approximation. In this work, we first presented the evaluation of different ML models for inferring the distance between the devices and the installed beacons by applying different optimization algorithms. Then, we presented model reduction methods to implement the optimized algorithm on the embedded system by appropriately adapting it to its constraint resources and compared the results, demonstrating the efficiency of the proposed method.

Keywords: Bluetooth; beacons; embedded IPS; indoor localization; machine learning.