Is it possible to use Wi-Fi / Bluetooth triangulation (not trilateration) with a mobile device?
Well for triangulation you need to have the direction from which your device receives the signal. We can calculate the Angle of Arrival for this, but calculating this angle requires an array of receivers. Is the cell phone capable of calculating the angle of arrival? I ask this because I came across terms like Wi-Fi / BLE triangulation, position computation by triangulation, etc., but most of the time they refer to Trilateration . I know how trilateration works for mobile and all the details, but I don't think triangulation is possible. And if possible, how is it possible and which one (triangulation or trilateration) is expected to give the best result if you use ibeacons to approximate positions?
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Many people are misleading with the terms you pointed out. Triangulation is not possible with standard beacons or Wi-Fi (I mean without changing the standard 4.0 or 4.1 and WiFi) right now because the standard does not communicate useful information such as phase (if you have a phase and array of directional antennas that run one at a time at a given frequency, you can use algorithms like MUSIC and deal with angles), but we only have Rssi and TX power on one meter (if it is an iBeacon) with this information, we can estimate a distance that is very imprecise and changes rapidly over time due to multipath and diffraction. At Nextome, we have invented an algorithm to mitigate multipath fading, which causes a jump in signal and achieves high indoor placement accuracy of about 1 meter without a fingerprint.No one has tested triangulation with standard iBeacons right now, but trilateration. I would start looking for at least a square approximation to solve trilateration problems, but don't expect great results without filtering out noise.
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Mobile mast triangulation typically uses the power level to estimate how far a particular cell tower is from the phone. The phone usually communicates with several towers at any given moment, although it only uses one at a time for calls, etc.
If you have an estimate of the distance from two or more towers, you can imagine a circular motion around each tower with a radius equal to that distance.
Where the circles intersect is the "likely" position (s) of the mobile device.
WiFi estimation works on roughly the same principles, but much more accurate because there are so many other WiFi networks out there.
Large data aggregators (Goggle, Apple, etc. and their partners) receive data from millions of phones, allowing them to pinpoint the exact location of a particular WiFi network. When you then ask your phone to check your position, they will be able to see which wifi networks you are close to and vey have narrowed your position for sure, especially in a built-up area with many wifi networks.
Most phone positioning systems will use a combination of technology, GPS, cell strangulation, Wi-Fi to narrow your location.
Of course, if you are on a mountain top or in the desert, options are a little limited and GPS becomes more important ...
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