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Nokia tweaks Bluetooth for indoor navigation
Rick Merritt
11/29/2011 6:08 PM EST
SUNNYVALE, Calif. – Nokia Research is courting partners and expanding Bluetooth as part of an initiative on indoor location-based services. The company aims to leverage its handset and mapping products to enable a wide range of services including indoor navigation and retail analytics.
"We want to take what's been done in navigation outdoors and bring it inside," said Fabio Belloni, a principal researcher in Nokia's radio systems lab that looks for new ways to use networks.
Nokia has two pilots using a new Bluetooth protocol in the works and has reached out to as many as 30 companies in an effort to set broader standards that ultimately may include Wi-Fi and other networks.
The company is leading work on a new Location Extension protocol to ride on top of Bluetooth 4.0. It could be issued as a standard by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group in about 18 months.
Nokia designed a prototype based on a room outfitted with Bluetooth Low Energy antenna arrays that track devices with Bluetooth tags. The prototype uses triangulation to create 3-D maps of a room.
Researchers envision equipping malls, exhibit halls and other large buildings with the antenna arrays to help people people navigate though them. They also foresee large stores using tagged carts to track and study shopper behavior.
The Bluetooth arrays could be inexpensive, and ultimately they could be integrated as a feature into Wi-Fi access points the buildings already use, said Belloni.
Nokia gathered about 30 companies including chip and system makers and service providers to an event to roll out its concepts. It hopes to create a formal group that could help set global standards for such indoor navigation services.
The demo was one of several marking the 25th anniversary of the Nokia Research which is now setting up a new satellite office here. Another demo showed a flexible handheld OLED display users could bend to navigate through computer menus.
Nokia researcher Fabio Belloni (top) demos an indoor navigation system using a prototype Bluetooth tag (left) and Bluetooth antenna array (below).
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hm
11/29/2011 7:18 PM EST
Indoor navigation is quite essential in some environment like hosptials, education institutes and similar. However, can they do it with exsiting infrastructure like power line communication?
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daleste
11/29/2011 11:56 PM EST
Interesting idea. Good to see Nokia coming up with new stuff.
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yalanand
12/5/2011 1:46 AM EST
@daleste, but I am not so much excited about this technology because I don't think people will enable their bluetooth switch all the time since it consumes lot of power.
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prabhakar_deosthali
11/30/2011 12:19 AM EST
How is this indoor blue tooth navigation different from NFC? Adding too many communication standards makes life complicated for the end customers while making buying choice for their phones
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aromeo
11/30/2011 3:05 AM EST
Because bluetooth is passive. To begin a NFC communication the user need to do something.
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yalanand
12/5/2011 1:41 AM EST
@aromeo, isn't it true that in case of Bluetooth also user has to "switch on bluetooth" so that he can be traced with this device ? Why do you think this is passive ?
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chouban
11/30/2011 7:35 AM EST
Google just realized his Google map 6.0 that do the same ... but i think they use wifi for localisation
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t.alex
11/30/2011 8:56 AM EST
Hopefully they combine both wifi and bluetooth for this purpose. Or else consumers are mostly confused.
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rick.merritt
11/30/2011 10:45 AM EST
Interestingly, Google Maps just announced an indoor feature supported in Android.
See http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/new-frontier-for-google-maps-mapping.html
Looks like Nokia may need to get some help from Microsoft accelerating its program!
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chanj
11/30/2011 12:44 PM EST
Indoor navigation is obviously a path to go. I was thinking if there was a map in a shopping mall to help me to locate shop a while back.
Coincidentally, I've got news from Google is offering indoor navigation yesterday. I'm glad to learn that Nokia is walking on the same path. Using combination of bluetooth and WiFi and establishing a standard seem to be the right path. Bluetooth provides a better granularity while WiFi provides a coverage of a larger area.
Today's Bluetooth doesn't automatically pair up to bluetooth around it. I don't think the smartphone or tablet automatically accept any data from a bluetooth transmitter nearby. There seemingly are changes in driver, firmware and, possibly hardware. I can't wait to learn more about the detail. :)
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jamony
12/24/2011 9:48 AM EST
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Luis Sanchez
11/30/2011 3:02 PM EST
Very interesting. I wonder if the antenna arrays do a complete connection with the tags? I suppose this isn’t necessary if they are taking advantage of the advertisement packets that the Bluetooth Low energy devices can transmit. It’s all a matter of capturing the RSSI values and doing a triangulation with it. And the mobile tags can respond to the antennas with a little more of information … this would perhaps further increase the 3d location resolution of the system.
Considering the comment from ‘hm’ about using PLC I think this isn’t necessary as the article mentions using the WiFi hotspots which already are 2.4GHz radio’s. but wouldn’t this be a new product of it’s one? I haven’t heard about a WiFi router with Bluetooth Protocol capabilities. Only in mobile phones.
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hm
11/30/2011 6:50 PM EST
This is novel and interesting idea. Can they add more hardware/firmware for family or group so that they can also locate/track each other in mall and can meet easily without getting lost?
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jamony
12/24/2011 9:49 AM EST
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jamony
12/24/2011 9:51 AM EST
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=mobiquity%20networks%20blog&source=web&cd=8&ved=0CFAQtwIwBw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DmxliKrCGUZo&ei=x-b1TriRO8jm0QHvifW8Ag&usg=AFQjCNFMMPCpHnbth-vF4iFbicZXMamfFA
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