A multi-technology indoor positioning service to enable new location-aware applications

The development of location based services for indoor environment has been limited by the lack of a GPS equivalent positioning system. In fact indoor localization technologies are installed in specific contests and usually requires dedicated terminals. Some location systems relay on the communication technologies available on mobile phones such as WiFi or Bluetooth. However these solutions are standalone systems and usually can´t collaborate or can´t be integrated with other solutions. In this paper we introduce the CAMMEO system that aims to overcome the limitation of existing location infrastructures. CAMMEO proposes well-defined interfaces among the actors involved in the localization: the wireless technologies, the positioning algorithms and the applications. These interfaces are implemented in a distributed system comprising mobile devices, servers and wireless infrastructures. The main goals of the system are to provide: i) a direct interface toward various wireless technologies, ii) a modular integration of existing localization frameworks and positioning engines and iii) a standard interface for application developers including also a maps management facility. We present a prototyping implementation of the CAMMEO system integrating WiFi, Bluetooth and RFID wireless technologies.