Audio beacon providing location-aware content for low-end mobile devices

Location Based Services can generate variety of new commercial applications and create new streams of revenue. However, there is currently no simple indoor positioning method for low-end devices which have no Wi-Fi or GPS capability. This paper presents a novel and simple audio-based localization system to provide location-aware content for low-end mobile devices, i.e., a location solution that uses acoustic waves to determine the position of the users and/or the content associated to it. In this solution, Audio Beacons send tones which are read by mobile devices for localization. These tones are generated in a barely audible frequency range, that can be hardly perceived by humans. The tones of the Audio Beacons are associated with an identification code that is linked to a location specific content. The solution requires no special hardware at the mobile device side, and a simple localization infrastructure, which can be deployed with low cost loudspeakers. Real experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed system, and show that the codes can be identified with distances as large as 20 m from the Audio Beacon.