Optimum Access-Point Constellation for Indoor Time Difference of Arrival Positioning.

The availability of ubiquitous location services is a highly desirable feature for many upcoming applications in the realm of the Internet of Things (IoT), including asset tracking, navigation services especially in indoor environments such as shopping centers, or emergency people tracking in schools, hospitals, and prisons. While outdoor positioning is perfectly covered by Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), indoor positioning services, except for a few pioneer projects, did not hit the mainstream yet. At first, this is surprising, as the underlying technology has been known for years and solutions already exist based on WiFi or Bluetooth beacons. A major problem is, that the locations of those beacons need to be highly tailored to the specific indoor floorplan for high positioning accuracies, which directly contradicts the need for a cheap installment. Picking up this challenge, we present a methodology for fast optimization of access point locations in indoor environments, maximizing coverage and positioning accuracy that will facilitate a broad deployment of indoor positioning systems.