Bluetooth-based Vehicle and Pedestrian Positioning for Road Tunnels: A Performance Evaluation Study

Abstract

The capability and demand of locating devices in any environment are anticipated to rise. This is also true for autonomous vehicles, Vehicle-to-Everything systems, and emergency services. Today's solutions with the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) and dead-reckoning become lackluster when inside of tunnels. Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) serves as an alternative to this problem with its affordable prices and scalability in terms of maintenance and installment. This project's main focus is BLE-based positioning of vehicles and pedestrians inside of road tunnels.

Most of the available work related to Indoor Positioning System (IPS) is focused on the indoor scenario. With the small amount of research into how these IPSs perform inside of tunnels, it becomes unclear how they will perform in that environment.

This thesis will therefore take the experimental approach to measure the performance of a BLE RSSI-based IPS in a tunnel scenario, where you can have both pedestrians and vehicles traveling at high speeds.

Experiments were conducted in a tunnel located in Skaarlia, Sandnes. Even with the use of high-end equipment, it was concluded that the evaluated algorithms did not perform better than GNSS.

The capability and demand of locating devices in any environment are anticipated to rise. This is also true for autonomous vehicles, Vehicle-to-Everything systems, and emergency services. Today's solutions with the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) and dead-reckoning become lackluster when inside of tunnels. Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) serves as an alternative to this problem with its affordable prices and scalability in terms of maintenance and installment. This project's main focus is BLE-based positioning of vehicles and pedestrians inside of road tunnels.

Most of the available work related to Indoor Positioning System (IPS) is focused on the indoor scenario. With the small amount of research into how these IPSs perform inside of tunnels, it becomes unclear how they will perform in that environment.

This thesis will therefore take the experimental approach to measure the performance of a BLE RSSI-based IPS in a tunnel scenario, where you can have both pedestrians and vehicles traveling at high speeds.

Experiments were conducted in a tunnel located in Skaarlia, Sandnes. Even with the use of high-end equipment, it was concluded that the evaluated algorithms did not perform better than GNSS.