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A Survey of Bluetooth Indoor Localization

Taolei Shi, Wei Gong

TL;DR

This survey addresses the gap in comprehensive reviews of Bluetooth indoor localization by organizing Bluetooth localization techniques into RSSI, CSI, fingerprinting, and other methods, and by evaluating systems on availability, cost, scalability, and accuracy. It highlights RSSI-based approaches as widespread yet limited by multipath and instability, while CSI-based methods offer richer channel information but face practical access constraints in BLE. Fingerprinting emerges as a robust strategy for indoor accuracy through offline radio maps, albeit with strong sensitivity to environmental changes and maintenance costs. The paper also discusses security and latency considerations, and outlines future directions such as leveraging CSI and inverse fingerprinting, adaptive learning, and optimized anchor placement to improve performance in real-world deployments.

Abstract

Nowadays, indoor localization has received extensive research interest due to more and more applications' needs for location information to provide a more precise and effective service [1], [2]. There are various wireless techniques and mechanisms that have been proposed; some of them have been studied in depth and come into use, such as Wi-Fi, RFID, and sensor networks. In comparison, the development of Bluetooth location technology is slow and there are not many papers and surveys in this field, although the performance and market value of Bluetooth are increasing steadily. In this paper, we aim to provide a detailed survey of various indoor localization systems with Bluetooth. In contrast with the existing surveys, we categorize the exciting localization techniques that have been proposed in the literature in order to sketch the development of Bluetooth location compared to other technologies. We also evaluate different systems from the perspective of availability, cost, scalability, and accuracy. We also discuss remaining problems and challenges to accurate Bluetooth localization.

A Survey of Bluetooth Indoor Localization

TL;DR

This survey addresses the gap in comprehensive reviews of Bluetooth indoor localization by organizing Bluetooth localization techniques into RSSI, CSI, fingerprinting, and other methods, and by evaluating systems on availability, cost, scalability, and accuracy. It highlights RSSI-based approaches as widespread yet limited by multipath and instability, while CSI-based methods offer richer channel information but face practical access constraints in BLE. Fingerprinting emerges as a robust strategy for indoor accuracy through offline radio maps, albeit with strong sensitivity to environmental changes and maintenance costs. The paper also discusses security and latency considerations, and outlines future directions such as leveraging CSI and inverse fingerprinting, adaptive learning, and optimized anchor placement to improve performance in real-world deployments.

Abstract

Nowadays, indoor localization has received extensive research interest due to more and more applications' needs for location information to provide a more precise and effective service [1], [2]. There are various wireless techniques and mechanisms that have been proposed; some of them have been studied in depth and come into use, such as Wi-Fi, RFID, and sensor networks. In comparison, the development of Bluetooth location technology is slow and there are not many papers and surveys in this field, although the performance and market value of Bluetooth are increasing steadily. In this paper, we aim to provide a detailed survey of various indoor localization systems with Bluetooth. In contrast with the existing surveys, we categorize the exciting localization techniques that have been proposed in the literature in order to sketch the development of Bluetooth location compared to other technologies. We also evaluate different systems from the perspective of availability, cost, scalability, and accuracy. We also discuss remaining problems and challenges to accurate Bluetooth localization.
Paper Structure (21 sections, 2 figures, 1 table)

This paper contains 21 sections, 2 figures, 1 table.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Preliminaries
  3. Types of Localization
  4. Localization Techniques
  5. RSSI
  6. CSI
  7. Fingerprinting
  8. Other methods
  9. Problems and challenges
  10. Accuracy
  11. Latency
  12. Range of Coverage
  13. Cost
  14. Security
  15. Literature review
  16. ...and 6 more sections

Figures (2)

  • Figure 1: The type of triangulation.
  • Figure 2: Generation of small regions.