Indoor navigation based on bluetooth beacons

Indoor structures are primarily made of walls and roof, this attenuates the signals from Global Positioning System (GPS) making it impossible to use the traditional method used for external navigation in an indoor environment as it doesn’t provide accurate results. In this paper, the use of Bluetooth beacons is proposed to determine the location of the user and help the user to navigate from one point to another. Strategically positioning the beacons inside large buildings like malls, hospital etc. will enable easy detection of one’s location and help them navigate from one point to another within the building. The paper also proposes a service wherein the crowd inside the building can also be detected thereby helping in the ease of navigation within the complex. Location is detected using trilateration technique while the footfall proposed, is calculated by detecting the number of nearby users. The navigation is done using Dijkstra’s algorithm. The user interface used in this experiment is an android application. The availability of the above mentioned three services i.e. location detection, navigation and footfall calculation will enable users to seamlessly navigate in crowded public spaces like hospitals, malls, movie theatres, public libraries etc. This will ensure that users, especially children, do not get lost in mega-buildings with complex floor plans, thereby ensuring their safety.