Solution Overview

The GPS Badge Tracker is a comprehensive indoor and outdoor tracking solution that utilizes both GPS and Bluetooth technologies to achieve adequate positioning for various consumer use cases.

For optimal results, Bluetooth beacons are mounted around the premises in a way that ensures that there are no dead zones. The tracker should be in the range of at least three beacons when indoors. The beacons should be mounted at (2 – 3) meters high on walls or on the ceiling with direct line-of-sight to the device. Avoid mounting the beacons behind concrete or metal pillars as it would greatly degrade the signal strength which would then affect the positioning accuracy. The beacon spacing will depend on the beacon range specifications.

When the tracker is indoors, it scans for nearby beacons and sends their MAC Addresses as well as RSSI readings to the LoRa gateway. The server would then compare the MAC Addresses sent from the device with the beacon’s MAC Addresses list stored on the server, if they match, the RSSI values are then fetched, processed and then used to calculate the tracker position using adequate algorithms and filters (e.g., trilateration, Kalman filters ...etc.). The tracker position data is then sent to the end devices for monitoring.

On the other hand, when the tracker is outdoors, it turns on the GPS module and attempts to acquire a fix. If it is successful, then it sends the acquired coordinates to the server through the gateway to then be sent to the end devices for monitoring. When the device is in-use, it sends data to the gateway every 5 minutes. However, when the device detects no movement, it goes into sleep mode to save power and turns back on when it detects movement.