Streamlining an indoor positioning architecture based on field testing in pipe spool fabrication shop

This paper describes the implementation of an indoor positioning architecture based on radio frequency profiling using received signal strength (RSS) measurements for localizing and tracking resources in construction-related applications. The profiling-based approach is coupled with commonly used noise filtering algorithms in order to cope with the application of material tracking in a pipe spool fabrication shop. With 95% likelihood, consistent positioning accuracy of 1-2 meters away from the actual position of a tracked tag can be obtained in the fabrication shop-which is deemed sufficient for materials and labor hours tracking in support of shop production control. In particular, through simulation experiments using data collected from a pipe fabrication shop we investigated the sensitivity of the resulting localization accuracy with respect to the quantity and layout of the reference points, aimed at streamlining system updating and simplifying solution implementation.