Investigations into Bluetooth Low Energy Localization Precision Limits

In this paper we study the influence of directional radio patterns of Bluetooth low energy (BLE) beacons on smartphone localization accuracy and beacon network planning. A two-dimensional model of the power emission characteristic is derived from measurements of the radiation pattern of BLE beacons carried out in an RF chamber. The Cramer-Rao lower bound (CRLB) for position estimation is then derived for this directional power emission model. With this lower bound on the RMS positioning error the coverage of different beacon network configurations can be evaluated. For near-optimal network planing an evolutionary optimization algorithm for finding the best beacon placement is presented.