Positioning has become an important technology in our daily life. GNSS, Beidou, GPS or Beidou /GPS+5G/WiFi fusion satellite positioning technology is supported outside. With
the increasing demand for indoor application scenarios, we find that satellite positioning technology is not the optimal solution for such scenarios.
Indoor positioning due to the differences in application scenarios, project requirements and realistic conditions, it is difficult to provide services with a uniform set of technical
standards, which contributes to the indoor positioning technology solutions in recent years more and more rich. Such as WiFi positioning, Bluetooth iBeacon positioning,
geomagnetic positioning, UWB positioning, and Bluetooth AOA positioning industr application solutions emerge in an endless stream.
At present, in the indoor positioning market “a hundred schools of thought contend, a hundred flowers bloom”, and the positioning accuracy of the situation is getting higher and
higher, WiFi positioning technology in the indoor positioning market and its development space?
Indoor Positioning Can not Lack WiFi
Compared with UWB and Bluetooth AOA positioning technologies that are popular in the past two years, WiFi positioning accuracy is only at meter level, but it is superior to
transmission distance and extremely low cost. WiFi positioning scheme is very suitable for application in pan-positioning scenes, such as department stores and shopping malls.
Therefore, WiFi technology also plays an important role in the development of indoor positioning.
WiFi location, as its name implies, is a location technology based on WiFi signals. It is divided from the way of obtaining location signals, and has passive positioning on the side of
WiFi network and active positioning on the side of WiFi terminal.
Passive positioning on the WiFi network. It is based on the wireless LAN or the dedicated WiFi probe network in the site. By uniformly receiving WiFi signals on the server side and analyzing and calculating them, the location of intelligent terminals in the site can be calculated (the smart terminals to be located are neither required to install specific programs nor need to connect to a specific network). WiFi network side positioning can realize the position perception of wireless network equipment in the site, and calculate the moving trend of crowd, crowd density and target moving track. In an ideal environment, the average positioning accuracy of zhongke Jin point in commercial practice is about 5 meters.
Active location on the WiFi terminal. Generally, the positioning method is represented by WiFi location fingerprint. WiFi location fingerprint recognition algorithm is a WiFi location algorithm that relies on the signal characteristics sent by the AP around the terminal to locate, and makes use of the RSSI signal intensity database corresponding to the geographical location of the actual site to conduct comparative analysis and identification. In the early stage of the development of indoor positioning, WiFi terminal side active positioning was widely used in the real-time navigation location service of shopping malls and parking lots. In an ideal environment, the average accuracy of active positioning based on WiFi in commercial practice is about 3 meters.
WiFi relative positioning. In addition to the above two WiFi location methods, there is another relative location technology that is not well known to the public. Compared with the aforesaid two WiFi positioning, WiFi relative positioning can be separated from the map to realize the distance judgment and even azimuth recognition between two terminals with the help of public WiFi signals in the same place. In the business practice of Zhongkejin Point Company, the positioning accuracy of the two terminals can be generally realized about 5 meters from the distance judgment of the map application.
A subdivided WiFi positioning scheme based on the scene can not only ensure its own advantages but also better optimize the positioning accuracy and achieve the maximum application value of indoor +WiFi.
“Digging gold ” WiFi Location Technology
Although the passive positioning on the side of WiFi network is restricted by the protection mechanism of mobile phone privacy in the later stage, the best solution is still the passive positioning on the side of WiFi network for thermal perception of passenger flow distribution in some specific public places.
The commercial value of WiFi network positioning lies in the fact that the real-time distribution state of the crowd can be obtained without the perception of the crowd based on the existing wireless LAN infrastructure without additional equipment. It can be used for emergency command in large indoor public places such as airports, stations and sports centers.
Active positioning on the WiFi terminal side is also subject to the privacy protection strategy of mobile phones. Many indoor real-time navigation applications turn to bluetooth iBeacon technology route, but in some specific scenarios, WiFi terminal positioning still has its special advantages. For example, campuses or communities have better WiFi fingerprint features than shopping malls in the past due to the large number of wireless aps or home routers distributed in these scenes. Based on these WiFi fingerprint features, it can be combined with some patrol patrol business applications through the APP background positioning mode, and can also be combined with the Cat.1 patrol name tag launched by Zhongkejin point to achieve ultra-low cost cleaning, security real-time location attendance and track management. Compared with the huge hardware investment of UWB or Bluetooth AOA, WiFi positioning technology with 4G Internet of Things from operators has higher practical commercial value.
The relative positioning of WiFi, which is not known to the public, can be used as a technical supplement to the existing lost-proof device, and solve the problem that the location of the existing lost-proof device is unknown in the indoor scene and it is impossible to find. For example, the pet anti-loss device integrated with WiFi relative positioning can realize the electronic fence setting of the pet in the building through the preset “electronic sentry”. Even if the pet enters the room, it can easily master the actual whereabouts and find it.
The scenarios of the three subdivided WiFi positioning technologies to achieve commercial value are in line with their own differentiation, and the application scenarios are subdivided and customized to achieve higher application value of the scheme. WiFi positioning is mostly used for personnel insensitive positioning, so in the current environment, WiFi network side positioning occupies most of the application proportion.
WiFi Positioning Can Be Expected in the Future
According to Market & Markets, the global indoor location Market will grow to $40.99 billion in 2022 and maintain a compound growth rate of 42%. Interior positioning has gradually evolved from TO B/to G to C, but commercial drive and government drive are still two very critical factors.
According to data shown by Global Market Insights, the Global WiFi chip Market will reach over $20 billion in 2021 and will reach $22 billion in 2025. WiFi chip will be the most potential market segment in the field of wireless communication chip in the future.
ABI Research predicts that more than 430 million WiFi chips will be shipped globally in 2021, and more than 1 billion will be shipped by 2025. Chips are a tough demand for WiFi indoor location solutions. At the same time, domestic and foreign WiFi chip manufacturers are also keeping up with the development of WiFi technology, such as Qualcomm, Broadcom, Mediatek, Texas Instruments and other WiFi chip manufacturers are constantly innovating, and the current WiFi 6 chip track is also thriving. This trend further solidifies the advantage of WiFi location solutions: as the infrastructure of location systems, its ubiquitous and low-cost features are irreplaceable.
In the past, WiFi technology was mainly used as broadband communication network. Later, with the continuous improvement of positioning technology standards and precision by Bluetooth and UWB, WiFi also entered the positioning track. For example, passiveWi-Fi technology developed by the University of Washington can achieve passive sensing at a distance of 30 meters. In Android 9 Pie, Google uses 802.11MC protocol and RTT (round-trip delay) to implement wi-fi indoor location. WiFi is still a major player in changing indoor life.
Post time: May-25-2022