Particle filtering for positioning based on proximity reports

The commercial interest in proximity services is increasing. Application examples include location-based information and advertisements, logistics, social networking, file sharing, etc. In this paper, we consider positioning of devices based on time series proximity reports from a mobile device to a network node. This corresponds to nonlinear measurements with respect to the device position in relation to the network nodes. Therefore, particle filtering is applicable for positioning. Positioning performance is evaluated in a typical office area with Bluetooth-low-energy beacons deployed for proximity detection and report. Accuracy is concluded to vary spatially over the office floor, and in relation to the beacon deployment density.