Six ways to use fusion positioning technology in one article

In our daily lives, more than 80% of information is related to spatial location characteristics. Location information is closely related to people's production and life. Whether in indoor or outdoor environments, the need to quickly and accurately obtain the location information of mobile terminals and provide location services has become increasingly urgent. The demand for positioning is no longer just rough tracks and navigation. In the era of the Internet of Everything, high-precision positioning is becoming a rigid demand.

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Just on May 18, the China Satellite Navigation and Positioning Association released the "2021 China Satellite Navigation and Location Services Industry Development White Paper" (hereinafter referred to as the "White Paper"), pointing out that the total output value of the industry in 2020 increased by 16.9% year-on-year to 403.3 billion yuan. Among them, the growth rate of the high-precision positioning market far exceeded that of the entire industry, with a year-on-year growth of 47.5% in 2020 and a total output value of 11.04 billion yuan. From 2010 to 2020, the annual sales revenue of high-precision positioning products increased 10 times, with an average annual compound growth rate of 26%, and it accelerated significantly in 2020.

Data source: "2021 China Satellite Navigation and Location Services Industry Development White Paper"

In current practical applications, adding positioning functions requires independent positioning technology solutions, which also means additional costs. Therefore, when considering positioning solutions, users cannot just consider it as a "icing on the cake" function, but must generate real value, such as security monitoring, vehicle monitoring, prison guards, drones, agricultural machinery, engineering machinery, surveying and mapping instruments, robots and IoT terminals.

With the emergence of new applications (such as self-driving cars and drones), technological breakthroughs (such as dual-frequency chipsets for the mass market) and market service optimization (in some countries, high-precision positioning services are cheap or even free), the high-precision positioning service market is developing rapidly. It will not only be a professional application-level service, but also a mass-level service.

Therefore, the "White Paper" points out that precise space-time services are gradually replacing current location services to become the core direction of industrial development, and high-precision popular application innovation has become an inevitable trend in industry development.

Bluetooth radio technology unlocks the power of high-precision positioning

As mentioned earlier, high-precision positioning is becoming a rigid demand, and the realization of this demand also relies on long-term technological accumulation. With the advancement and popularization of communication technologies such as Bluetooth, WiFi, UWB, and 5G, various communication positioning solution providers are constantly making progress in high precision. The improvement of technology provides a basis for the application of high-precision positioning.

Bluetooth was first known to the public for its communication function. Currently, the four major applications of Bluetooth are: audio transmission, data transmission, location services, and Mesh networks. Today, location services will be the fastest growing application area of ​​Bluetooth.

Source: ABI Research

According to the latest SIG release of the "2021 Bluetooth Market Update", although the outbreak of the new crown epidemic and the resulting travel and work restrictions have led to a short-term decline in the deployment of Bluetooth location services by about 25%. However, due to the continued market interest in asset tracking and indoor positioning use cases, analysts expect Bluetooth location service deployments to rebound by the end of 2021 and achieve a compound annual growth rate of 32% from now to 2025.

By the end of 2021, the total number of Bluetooth location service deployments will reach 262,000.

Source: ABI Research

Indoor navigation will surpass other location services deployments in 2021 alone: ​​While location services solutions support many different use cases, from proximity services to asset tracking, indoor navigation is a must for every location service deployment. Currently, nearly 80% of Bluetooth location services deployments include indoor navigation capabilities.

Retail use cases lead the deployment of Bluetooth location services: Bluetooth technology is showing strong growth in many different verticals. Currently, 66% of Bluetooth deployments support retail use cases, and Bluetooth deployments are expected to double in the next five years.

Bluetooth technology has now formed a huge ecosystem, and it is estimated that by 2025, the annual shipment of Bluetooth devices will reach 6.4 billion. The emerging Bluetooth AoA/AoD technology will bring higher and better positioning performance, and the huge Bluetooth ecosystem will help accelerate the promotion and implementation of this new technology. From the perspective of location service applications alone, by 2025, the deployment volume of Bluetooth real-time asset tracking use cases will reach 516,000; the deployment volume of indoor location services will increase by 2 times; and the Bluetooth medical location service solution will increase by about 5 times to 380,000. In addition, "smartphones are digital keys". Now people are very accepting of mobile phones as a payment method for digital wallets, and smartphones will continue to expand their role in daily life.

The battle of positioning technology: integrated positioning is the way out

Fragmentation is the biggest feature of the Internet of Things industry. Different Internet of Things applications have very different requirements. Just as no communication technology is suitable for all Internet of Things applications, no positioning technology can meet all positioning scenarios. In many application scenarios, after meeting the functional requirements, in order to pursue better cost-effectiveness, it is necessary to integrate and apply multiple positioning technologies. The integrated positioning technology solution has gradually become an industry trend.

At present, many manufacturers are considering or trying fusion positioning technology during the system development process.

Bluetooth AOA + UWB fusion positioning

The former has the advantage of smaller area scenarios, while the latter has the advantage of larger or even super-large area scenarios. The cost advantages and disadvantages of the two scenarios are very different. In order to solve the limitations of the above two single systems, and the types of on-site positioning scenarios are diverse and even complex, the two positioning solutions are heterogeneously integrated to improve the confidence and reliability of positioning results, solve the problems of poor anti-occlusion ability and large positioning data jumps of single UWB positioning systems; and solve the large error problem caused by the assumed terminal height in the single AoA positioning system, while fully meeting the positioning needs and effectively reducing the deployment cost.

It is reported that many projects have been implemented so far, covering prisons, nursing homes, hospitals, substations, oil and gas pipelines, etc. In the future, more in-depth research and achievement transformation will be carried out in the field of indoor positioning.

5G+Bluetooth AOA fusion positioning

The advent of the 5G era has allowed telecom operators to see the value of combining indoor positioning technology with 5G, because operators naturally have the ability to build and operate indoor communication networks. Today, operators deploy 5G in the order of outdoor first and indoor later, that is, outdoor macro base stations are deployed first, and indoor small base stations are deployed later. With the construction of 5G indoor network coverage, operators have begun to consider deploying a "5G communication + precise location" network, integrating the deployment of positioning base stations and communication base stations.

Bluetooth AOA + iBeacon fusion positioning

The solution relies on a multi-source fusion positioning algorithm and supports the integration of Bluetooth, inertial navigation, satellite positioning, AOA and other positioning technologies to provide high-precision integrated indoor and outdoor positioning and dynamic navigation. It can be applied to industries such as medical care, transportation, culture, and commerce. For large indoor scenes such as Quectel, parks, transportation hubs, museums, exhibition halls, shopping centers, and parking lots, it provides indoor and outdoor integrated mapping, positioning, navigation and other location IoT services as well as long-term and reliable personnel and asset location IoT services.

Geomagnetic/Inertial Navigation + Bluetooth AOA Fusion Positioning

The system is a fusion positioning solution with magnetic field positioning as the core. The magnetic field characteristics are generated by the geomagnetic field and the building structure. They vary non-uniformly with the spatial position and stabilize over time. The fusion positioning terminal product has inertial positioning, magnetic field positioning and fusion algorithms. By obtaining data such as magnetic field, acceleration, angular velocity and Bluetooth signal strength, the user's location information is solved.

Bluetooth Mesh light networking area + high-precision fusion positioning

The system uses lamps as carriers and adopts decentralized Mesh communication technology and AI technology to build an efficient, easy-to-use, low-cost indoor wireless network. It integrates multiple networks such as the Internet of Things, location network, and sensor network. It is an important part of the space digitalization solution. The positioning accuracy of different positioning areas can be selected according to different needs and cost constraints, and it can continue to be adjusted after the project is implemented without affecting the deployed system.

Large capacity + full-duplex + high-precision fusion positioning

The system uses software radio technology and uses technologies with high capacity, wide coverage, accurate positioning, and full-duplex in the Bluetooth frequency band, which solves the limitation that Bluetooth cannot be deployed on a large scale in a limited area. Through the form of base stations, the fully closed-loop operation of positioning, sensor data collection, and equipment control is realized, solving the problem of multi-device duplex communication in the "last meter", improving the control ability of real vision for fire protection, industry, medical care, security, industry and other industries, and creating more application scenarios.

Final Thoughts

At present, the two most popular indoor high-precision positioning technologies in the industry are Bluetooth AOA and UWB. Before 2020, UWB was the hot technology for indoor high-precision positioning. With the iteration of Bluetooth standards and protocols, Bluetooth AOA technology began to emerge. Although Bluetooth AOA technology is only a small branch of high-precision positioning technology, it has broad market opportunities.