Two indoor location demos to see at MWC 2014

I'm blogging
now from the 2014 Mobile World Congress, MWC 2014, in Barcelona, so I'm writing quickly. If you or a colleague are at MWC, and are interested in indoor location technologies, there are two demos that you definitely want to see. (In fact, there are more than two, and I'll blog about others later. But the others will take more explanation, and I wanted to share these two now quickly.)

The first is in the official MWC mobile application. In the mapping section, you can see your own location and track yourself on the map as you move around. You can also navigate to specific booths you're looking for. As I wrote earlier, the location positioning in this app is based on technology from PoleStar, even though this isn't indicated explicitly since they were a subcontractor to a subcontractor.

The location positioning uses a combination of Wi-Fi fingerprinting, BLE beacons, and motion sensing. The positioning isn't perfect, which isn't a surprise since the RF conditions at the conference are crazy and very dynamic, but it's definitely good enough to be effective in finding where you and and where you're going. You can judge for yourself in the video below.

The second is a much more precise location positioning demo from SK Telecom, in hall 3. This demo is more precise because they're using UWB (ultra-wideband) technology from a company called DecaWave. We've written more about DecaWave's technology and the benefits of UWB here. As you can see from the video below, UWB gives this demo much more meter-by-meter precision.

These are two of more than a hundred indoor location technologies analyzed in the recently-updated 417-page Grizzly Analytics report on indoor location.

If you're at MWC, there are many more indoor location demos to be seen as well. I'll be blogging more about some of them soon. Enjoy the conference!

Here are the videos. First the MWC app:

And now the SKT demo:

Looks like lots of action in the indoor location area this year... stay tuned for more!

Intel demos indoor location technology in new Wi-Fi chips at MWC 2015

Intel made several announcements at MWC 2015, including a new chipset for wireless connectivity (Wi-Fi) in mobile devices. This new chipset, the 8270, include in-chip support for indoor location positioning. Below we explain their technology and show a video of it in action. With this announcement, Intel joins Broadcom, Qualcomm and other chip makers in moving broad indoor location positioning into mobile device hardware.

The transition of indoor location positioning into chips is a trend identified in the newest Grizzly Analytics report on Indoor Location Positioning Technologies, released the week before MWC 2015. By moving indoor location positioning from software into hardware, chips such as Intel's enable location positioning to run continuously and universally, without using device CPU, and with less power consumption.

Intel's technology delivers 1-3 meter accuracy, using a technique called multilateration, generating a new location estimate every second. While 1-3 meter …

33 Indoor Location Technologies at Mobile World Congress 2017

The number of companies exhibiting indoor location technologies at the 2017 Mobile World Congress (MWC) skyrocketed to 33!

Before MWC started, we released our Guide to Indoor Location at MWC, with 23 companies:

During the conference we notified our guide recipients of 10 other indoor location exhibitors that we saw. (Sign up here to receive our guide and to be on our mailing list for next year's MWC.)

This is many more indoor location related exhibits that previous years. The area is growing by leaps and bounds! Our recent report on indoor location technologies analyzed and profiled almost 200 companies!

Here are some videos, so you can see the technologies in action, followed by a list of the other indoor location companies that were at MWC.

First up is Philips Lighting, with high-accuracy indoor location positioning based on LED light modulation and visible light communication (VLC) technology:

Next comes Estimote, makers of Bluetooth (BLE) beacons, who introduced self-mapping b…

Ultra-Wideband Poised to Enter Smartphones

Recent years have seen a constant increase in the speed at which software innovations reach market. One day’s new concept can be the next day’s innovative mobile application, the following day’s ten competing mobile applications, and the day after that’s built-in phone feature.
In hardware, however, innovation tends to go slower. Addition of new hardware chips or components to smartphones, for example, are a constant worry for smartphone manufacturers, who need to be 100% certain that the new innovation won’t in some way hurt the other functions and components of the phone.
Does adding a new chip affect in any way the electrical signals between the other chips? Does a new wireless component affect the radio waves of the core phone or wireless components? Do signals to or from a new antenna hurt the performance of other antennas in the device?
Early cellphones and smartphones often had concerns of this sort. Some early smartphones did not include vibrate-mode because the shaking int…

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