A review of smartphones based indoor positioning: challenges and applications

TL;DR

This paper reviews recent smartphone-based indoor positioning systems, discussing their challenges, sensor categories, and applications, providing a taxonomy and evaluation criteria to guide future research and practical deployment.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive taxonomy of smartphone sensors for indoor positioning and evaluates recent systems, highlighting open research challenges and practical considerations.

Findings

Categorization of indoor positioning systems by sensor type

Identification of key open research questions

Assessment of practical applications and challenges

Abstract

The continual proliferation of mobile devices has encouraged much effort in using the smartphones for indoor positioning. This article is dedicated to review the most recent and interesting smartphones based indoor navigation systems, ranging from electromagnetic to inertia to visible light ones, with an emphasis on their unique challenges and potential real-world applications. A taxonomy of smartphones sensors will be introduced, which serves as the basis to categorise different positioning systems for reviewing. A set of criteria to be used for the evaluation purpose will be devised. For each sensor category, the most recent, interesting and practical systems will be examined, with detailed discussion on the open research questions for the academics, and the practicality for the potential clients.