What are the Common Bluetooth Positioning Solutions？

Bluetooth location service is the fastest growing solution in the field of Bluetooth technology, mainly used in the fields of finding objects, indoor positioning, indoor navigation and property tracking. The Bluetooth Alliance is also constantly iterating on the Bluetooth technology, making the positioning technology more accurate, from the earliest simple Beacon positioning based on signal strength to the multi-antenna viewpoint positioning supported by Bluetooth 5.1.

At present, the Bluetooth positioning solutions on the market can be roughly include three types: active Bluetooth positioning solutions, passive Bluetooth positioning solutions, and active-passive integrated indoor positioning solutions.

1.    Active Bluetooth positioning solution is a method of scanning the iBeacon base station through a handheld device (mobile phone, tablet, etc.) for positioning. It adopts high-performance Bluetooth positioning algorithm, supports indoor high-precision positioning and navigation of various mobile terminals, and has functions such as real-time positioning, route planning, and reverse car search, which can be integrated into mobile APPs. This Bluetooth positioning system focuses on indoor route planning and navigation applications, and can be widely used in hospitals, parking lots, tourist attractions, office buildings, exhibition halls, museums, railway stations, playgrounds, supermarkets and other places.

The working principle of active Bluetooth positioning as follows:

Step1: Place the location beacon in a fixed position (according to the requirements of positioning accuracy, the interval of 6-10m), the beacon broadcasts a data packet at a certain period, and the data packet contains (uuid, major, minor and other information);

Step2: After the smart terminal (mobile phone, PAD, bracelet, etc.) enters the area covered by the beacon signal, it receives the broadcast data (MAC address, RSSI, etc.) of the beacon through the relevant programs built in the smart terminal;

Step3: You can directly display the location and related location services (such as navigation, etc.) on the smart terminal through the built-in map and algorithm, and can also display it on other devices based on the network back to the server.

2.    Passive Bluetooth positioning solution relies on positioning algorithms, Bluetooth gateways and Bluetooth positioning tags (badges, bracelets, tags, etc.). After the gateway receives the information sent by the Bluetooth device, after the server's calculation, it can understand the location of people and items in real time through the display channel. A positioning method. This positioning system is mostly used for background positioning and monitoring of people or things at the front desk, and is widely used in factory property positioning, unit visitor management, nursing homes and other scenarios.

The working principle of passive Bluetooth positioning as follows:

Step1: Bluetooth terminal devices (bracelets, work cards, fixed asset tags, helmet tags, etc.) work in iBeacon mode, and periodically broadcast data packets (including: MAC address, UUID, major, minor, battery power, heart rate blood sample (requires device support) and other data);

Step2: The Bluetooth gateway scans the broadcast information of the Bluetooth terminal device, and transmits the relevant information to the map server, positioning algorithm server, and application server through the RJ45 wired network;

Step3: After the positioning algorithm server receives the terminal data and passes the calculation, the obtained location data is processed by the map server and the application server and displayed on the application display device.

3.    Active and passive integrated indoor positioning solution combines the advantages of the above systems, integrates a series of hardware such as Bluetooth positioning algorithm, Bluetooth gateway, Bluetooth positioning tag and ibeacon, and minimizes the use of Bluetooth gateway. Relatively speaking, the active-passive integrated positioning system scheme can greatly reduce the cost of deploying positioning hardware, and can be used for automatic positioning and forced positioning at the same time, with high cost performance. It uses Bluetooth 5.0 technology to achieve data backhaul, and has the technical characteristics of long coverage distance, high real-time performance, and large concurrency. It is widely used in museums, chemical plants, exhibition halls, logistics warehousing, nursing homes and other places.

The working principle of active and passive integrated indoor positioning solution as follows:

Step1: iBeacon beacon works in broadcast mode, and periodically broadcasts its own UUID, MAC address, major, minor, power and other information;

Step2: Bluetooth 5.1 badges (work cards, watches, fixed asset tags, etc.) scan and collect the broadcast information of the iBeacon;

Step3: The bluetooth 5.1 badge forwards the information of the iBeacon beacon collected by scanning to the bluetooth gateway through the bluetooth gateway in a certain period;

Step4: After the Bluetooth gateway collects the information of the bluetooth badge, it sends the ID of the bluetooth badge and the forwarded iBeacon information to the positioning server through RJ45 wired mode;

Step5: According to the information of the Bluetooth badge and iBeacon, the positioning server calculates the position of the Bluetooth 5.0 badge by running the positioning algorithm engine, and performs information processing with the map server, and displays it on the display terminal;

Step6: Through the application server, real-time location tracking, trajectory playback, electronic fence and other functions can be realized.