A Smartphone Indoor Positioning Method

Location based services are very useful to human beings. The vehicle navigation service that is used by almost all drivers in the world is an example location based service. As the man made constructions are getting bigger and bigger, indoor location based services are demanded. Matter of fact, researches for indoor location based service started in the early 1990s and developing techniques with which universally available efficient indoor location based service systems can be built is one of the hottest current research issues. Considering the features of smart phones, its computing power and the sensor devices equipped on it, moreover it is one of the most popular personal belongings, we conclude that a smart phone is the most ideal device on which indoor location based service systems should be executed. Therefore, we propose a method of indoor positioning that determines the user's current position with the smart phone's sensor values. Referring to the accelerometer values, our method counts steps. With the orientation values, our method estimates the direction. With the step count and the direction, our method determines the current location of the user. Referring to the floor map, our method adjusts the user's current location from time to time. We have implemented the proposed method on Android smart phones and our test results are discussed in this paper.