Why Indoor Positioning?

What is Outdoor Positioning?

Before we delve deep into the depths of technological jargon, it’s important that the groundwork for understanding is laid down.  What is Indoor Positioning?  Why do we need it?  What can it do for us?

Confused Woman Image

 

Let us start by defining Outdoor Positioning.  Outdoor positioning is commonly referred to as GPS (Global Positioning System) and A-GPS (Assisted GPS).  Using satellites, cell towers, and Wi-Fi databases, outdoor positioning does a reliable job of pinpointing you within approximately 20 meters [1].  Standard GPS is a great solution for outdoor positioning products, such as road navigation, photo tagging, and location based searches.

 

While it is a great solution for many products, GPS suffers from one fundamental problem.  The signals sent by GPS satellites are relatively weak. So weak in fact, that these signals cannot penetrate the structure of most buildings. This makes positioning within a building very difficult, if not impossible. With the help of A-GPS, you can usually estimate a position within general proximity of the building you are in, but you would never be able to take the next step to achieve accurate indoor positioning using these methods.

 
 

What is Indoor Positioning?

 

Buildings are complicated structures, with hallways, multiple stories, and numerous entrances. In indoor environments, 20 meters is no longer sufficient, and even if it was, as mentioned before, satellites cannot penetrate through the structures.  Thus, a need for indoor positioning has arisen.

 

Indoor Positioning shall be defined as any system that attempts to provide an accurate position inside of a covered structure, such as an Airport, a Subway, or a Mall. It is generally implied that modern indoor positioning systems do not use GPS Satellites in any way.

 

Qubulus uses a method for indoor positioning called Radio Fingerprinting to achieve the highest known accuracy in the industry today.  It does not require the installation of any additional hardware, it is completely software based, and if you continue on to read about Our Technology, you will find out how we do it.

 
 

1. “GPS & Selective Availability Q&A”. [1]. Retrieved 2010-05-28.