An Overview of Indoor Positioning and Mapping Technology Standards

Abstract

Technologies and systems for indoor positioning, mapping, and navigation (IPMN) have rapidly developed over the latest decade due to advanced radio and light communications, the internet of things, intelligent and smart devices, big data, and so forth. Thus, a group of surveys for IPMN technologies, systems, standards, and solutions can be found in literature. However, currently there is no proposed solution that can satisfy all indoor application requirements; one of the biggest challenges is lack of standardization, even though several IPMN standards have been published by different standard developing organizations (SDOs). Therefore, this paper aims to re-survey indoor positioning and mapping technologies, in particular, the existing standards related to these technologies and to present guidance in the field. As part of our work, we provide an IPMN standards system architecture consisting of concepts, terms, models, indoor positioning technologies, software and tools, applications, services and policies, and indoor mapping and modelling; and, we present IPMN standards developed for our projects in practice, such as multi-source fusion positioning data interfaces; seamless cooperative positioning service interfaces; content model for indoor mapping and navigation, and specification for digital indoor map products.