BluePos: Positioning with Bluetooth

The need for a reliable estimation of the user´s position is driven by the growing numbers of location-based services. Satellite-based positioning systems such as GPS deliver decent positioning accuracy for many outdoor applications but fail inside buildings. Research has concentrated on reusing already installed 802.11-based network infrastructure, which most cell-phones cannot access. However, many cellphones and mobile devices do offer Bluetooth connectivity, and this paper demonstrates that Bluetooth nowadays provides adequate mechanisms for positioning in an office environment. We propose a Bluetooth-based positioning system and show by means of emulation with real-world data that a positioning accuracy of about 2.5 meters is achievable. Additionally, the impact of concurrently performed positioning on the data communication capabilities of Bluetooth is empirically investigated.