Wi-Fi indoor positioning solutions use existing Wi-Fi access points or Wi-Fi enabled sensors, to detect and locate transmitting Wi-Fi devices, such as smartphones and tracking tags throughout indoor spaces.

What is Wi-Fi Indoor Positioning?

When trying to navigate indoors, often leveraging a GPS signal is out of the question as buildings limit access to GPS signals. With the absence of a GPS signal, devices must rely on other technologies such as indoor positioning to pinpoint the indoor location of a user. There are a variety of indoor positioning technologies that can be used, including beacons, Wi-Fi, RFID, and geomagnetic.

Whether leveraging a cost-effective infrastructure-free system, or a more accurate hardware system, these technologies can enable a user to locate themselves or enable employees to keep track of their assets within a building.

To this day, Wi-Fi is still an effective option for indoor positioning, although it is typically less accurate than competing positioning technologies like BLE and UWB. Wi-Fi’s continued significance as a key technology for location-based applications, is largely in part because of the large number of Wi-Fi devices and already established Wi-Fi infrastructures throughout indoor spaces.

Wi-Fi is a radio-frequency technology for wireless communication that can be leveraged to detect and track the location of people, devices and assets, and can be easily activated for indoor positioning with existing Wi-Fi access points (APs) and hotspots. Incredibly vital and widespread, the Wi-Fi ecosystem is ubiquitous all throughout our daily lives. Wi-Fi is everywhere, especially in our indoor spaces, used by nearly all wireless devices and network infrastructures – including smartphones, computers, IoT devices, routers, APs, and more. Like other communication protocols including BLE and UWB, Wi-Fi can be used to transmit data between devices using radio waves.

The first version of the 802.11 Wi-Fi protocol was released in 1997. Since then, it has become one of the most important communication technologies in the world, serving as a backbone for global communication. A few years after the release of Wi-Fi, it emerged as one of the first go-to technologies for indoor positioning. As Wi-Fi’s popularity as an indoor positioning technology grew, companies like Apple, Google, and Microsoft began to combine Wi-Fi with GPS to provide location services in indoor spaces where GPS was not able to reach, using existing building APs. 

The recent release of the next generation of Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi 6, will further strengthen Wi-Fi’s role as one of the world’s most important technologies. Wi-Fi 6 is designed to be significantly quicker, more reliable, accurate, and secure than previous generations. It’s built for the new IoT landscape and will lead to more Wi-Fi devices that have cutting-edge capabilities for transformative use cases, many of which will draw on location.

Wi-Fi’s vast presence and accessibility makes it a very important standard for indoor positioning applications. It can be leveraged in many location-based use cases and offers options to easily get started with indoor positioning through existing Wi-Fi infrastructures.

Note: Location Analytics/Indoor mapping by HotWifiplatform

HotWifi platform can be used by clients to track location analytics of their customers. This includes foot traffic, occupancy of the store, visit patterns, etc. these data could be a used as a powerful tool to understand a visitor’s journey, helping a business owner makes insights about product placement and visitor flow. This could also include location specific advertising.

What is Indoor Analytics and how to use it to Benefit Your Business?

Wi-Fi indoor positioning solutions use existing Wi-Fi access points or Wi-Fi enabled sensors, to detect and locate transmitting Wi-Fi devices, such as smartphones and tracking tags throughout indoor spaces. 

Indoor analytics transforms location data into valuable insights that help you understand how visitors interact with your indoor space. By capturing, interpreting, and visualizing data, indoor analytics provide key metrics and reports on visitor behavior and movement. 

Location data collected by sensors or access points, or sent from APs to client devices, is used by various locationing applications and translated into insights that power multiple location-aware use cases. Wi-Fi-based positioning systems can use different methods to determine the location of devices. Most rely on Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) based techniques. However, some applications can leverage more advanced Wi-Fi positioning methods.

With indoor positioning technology and an indoor mapping platform, property managers are able to access analytical data on how their map is used by customers. This includes detailed reports on visitors, how they interact with your space, and their intent while visiting your property. You’re able to gain a better understanding of what your customers are looking for and leverage this information to your advantage.

While this technology helps customers navigate indoor spaces, it also proves valuable for businesses in another way; by equipping them with valuable insights and analytics.

These insights help you understand your customers better, which in turn helps with customer acquisition and retention. By leveraging indoor positioning data, you can identify potential areas for investment, create targeted content, promotions, and events that drive increased foot traffic, and optimize your venue layout to boost sales. 

By indoor analytics, businesses can connect the power of indoor intelligence to make smarter, more informed decisions, and ultimately drive results and increased foot traffic and revenue at their property.

Note: Ai-powered/ smart marketing by HotWifiplatform

HotWifi can collect powerful behavioral, affinity, and engagement data to enable better product selection, better feedback mechanisms, and power marketing initiatives.

HotWifi automates lookalike audience targeting and performs automated product recommendations via WIFI. This helps drive new customers to the location, drive more product sales and revenue, and increase seat turnover.

Different methods used by Wi-Fi-based positioning systems

Wi-Fi-based positioning systems can use different methods to determine the location of
devices. Most rely on Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) based
techniques. However, some applications can leverage more advanced Wi-Fi
positioning methods.

• Wi-Fi Positioning Using Access Points

Are Wi-Fi Indoor Positioning Systems Still Worth Implementing in future?

Wi-Fi has become readily available in just about every indoor space, so it may seem like a logical default choice for indoor positioning systems, but it has security and accuracy setbacks. However, a Wi-Fi positioning system is a good option for connecting indoor positioning systems.

Note: AI-powered Security by using HotWifi platform

By using AI-powered Security, HotWifi platform can automatically detect many forms of malicious & undesirable behavior, and ban those activities from the network. Massive benefit in reducing liability for businesses and improving the customer experiences. 

Conclusion

Wi-Fi positioning systems can be a feasible solution for indoor location analytics. Since HotWifi platform equipped with AI-powered Security, it could be feasible to be used effectively for a business office, restaurants/coffee shops, shopping mall, hospital, university campus, airport, big-box store, museum, and Etc,