Looking for custom indoor positioning solutions?
Contact us to explain your needs and figure out the most appropriate solution for your indoor positioning needs!
Advanced real-time positioning systems for people and asset tracking
End-to-end wireless solutions for real-time localization of people and assets in hospitals, offices, shopping malls, car parks, warehouses, and factories.
The challenge of indoor localization
Global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) such as GPS and Galileo are immensely popular localization technologies. Based on timing signals broadcast by satellites, these systems, however, stop functioning where the quality of the timing signals is not good enough, for example indoors. GNSS positioning also requires a significant amount of energy on the end device side whilst offering an accuracy limited to a few meters (generally).
Why is an indoor positioning system used?
Nonetheless, there are several use cases where localizing persons and objects is necessary:
- Emergency evacuation situations
- Vast warehouses
- Dangerous or health hazard environments
- Digital inventory
- Secure access control
That is the reason why CSEM has developed wireless solutions for people and asset tracking that can provide very accurate indoor positioning in real time and using a limited amount of energy. These solutions are compatible with:
- Different technologies: Received signal strength indicator (RSSI), Angle of Arrival/Departure, Time of Flight
- Protocols: Wi-Fi, ultra-wideband (UWB), Bluetooth Low Energy, proprietary RF protocols
- Radio frequencies: sub-GHz, 2.4 GHz, 3 GHz – 10 GHz
How accurate is an indoor positioning system?
The accuracy of indoor positioning systems can vary greatly based on the technology used and the specific environmental conditions. Our high-precision systems can achieve impressive accuracy down to the centimeter level (e.g., UWB). However, for most practical applications, an accuracy within a few meters is sufficient (e.g., RSSI at sub-GHz or 2.4 GHz).
Case studies of real-time people and asset positioning systems
In the past few years, CSEM has participated in several technological projects that have allowed us to develop a consistent portfolio of solutions for some of the use cases mentioned above.
Emergency evacuations: cruise ship safety and offshore personnel safety
The projects Lynceus and Lynceus2Market developed a localization solution to ensure safe and complete evacuation of passengers on cruise boats in case of emergency situations.
The project OffshoreMuster did likewise for workers on offshore oil and gas operations.
Localization in emergency situations (boat evacuation)
Highlights of our solution for sea vessel safety and emergency evacuations:
- End-to-end solution provided by CSEM (RF tags, infrastructure, and backend)
- High accuracy (3 to 5 m) in challenging RF environments (all metal)
- Dual radios (868MHz proprietary protocol and 2.4GHz Bluetooth Low Energy) for robustness
- Dual localization algorithms (proximity and probabilistic proprietary particle filtering)
Healthcare: Monitoring of patients in hospitals and elderly people at home
Remote monitoring solutions are of critical importance to guarantee the quality of life of elderly people living alone at home and to control the health of patients in hospitals. Geofencing technology may protect mentally ill people from accessing dangerous areas; indoor localization may help in detecting falls or health issues quickly, thus reducing intervention time in case of life-threatening issues.
Key features for people security and asset management in hospitals and at home:
- Wrist-based localization system for medical care units
- Preventing cognitively impaired people from opening doors of restricted areas
- Real-time bed localization for improved patient service
Secure keyless car access
Opening a car without a physical key is becoming increasingly important in the automotive industry. The keyless entry system is designed to ensure that the car is only opened when the legitimate user is within range of the vehicle. A properly designed localization system is crucial to achieve this result.
At CSEM, we have co-developed a secure market-leading system for localizing drivers with high indoor/outdoor accuracy. It uses Impulse Radio UWB (IR-UWB) for Two Way Time of Flight (TWTOF) ranging.
The system is compatible with low- and high-rate pulse repetition frequency (HRP/LRP) UWB radio interface. Its accuracy is 5-10 cm in line-of-sight and 60-100cm in non-line-of-sight.
Why choose CSEM for indoor positioning?
CSEM helps its customers develop efficient and effective indoor localization and tracking systems. CSEM can act as a one stop with state-of-the-art technology blocks (HW/FW/geolocation engine) to transform all kinds of RF signals into geographical coordinates.
Benefits of CSEM's indoor positioning systems
End-to-end solution (edge devices, infrastructure and backend)
- Technology agnostic
- Low power
- Real time
- High accuracy
- Customizable algorithms for precise localization
- Tools for debug, collection, and storage of mobility data
- Installation and configuration
- Standard-compliant solutions
Applications of our technology
- Asset tracking
- Warehouse inventory
- Industrial logistics
- Parking lots
- Emergencies management
- Secure access control
- Self-localization of sensors in harsh environments
- Indoor/outdoor transition
- Low-power protocol management
To probe further
Explore selected Conferences and Journal Papers
J. Beysens, "Performance Comparison of Radio Frequency based Angle-of-arrival and Ranging Solutions", CSEM Scientific and Technical Report, 2023, page 30.
Y. Piguet, J. Beysens, "Development of an Embedded Bluetooth Low Energy Based Angle-of-arrival Algorithm", CSEM Scientific and Technical Report, 2023, page 31.
J. Beysens, S. Narduzzi, L. Bergamini, "AI-based Localization: Learning from Synthetic Data from a Genetically Guided Digital Twin", CSEM Scientific and Technical Report, 2022.
C. Kassapoglou-Faist, R. Berguerand, A. Restrepo Zea, M. Sénéclauze, P. Dallemagne, “Pilot Demonstration of RF-based Localization and Monitoring in Offshore Platforms”, CSEM Scientific and Technical Report, 2022.
I. Panaretou, et al., "OffshoreMuster: An Integrated Real Time Localisation, Mustering And Evacuation Management System For Offshore Oil & Gas Health And Safety Operations", ADIPEC Technical Conference, Abu Dhabi, November 2021.