Indoor Positioning Based on Visible Light Communication

The emergent context-aware applications in ubiquitous computing demands for obtaining accurate location information of humans or objects in real-time. Indoor location-based services can be delivered through implementing different types of technology, among which is a recent approach that utilizes LED lighting as a medium for Visible Light Communication (VLC). The ongoing development of solid-state lighting (SSL) is resulting in the wide increase of using LED lights and thereby building the ground for a ubiquitous wireless communication network from lighting systems. Considering the recent advances in implementing Visible Light Positioning (VLP) systems, this article presents a review of VLP systems and focuses on the performance evaluation of experimental achievements on location sensing through LED lights. We have outlined the performance evaluation of different prototypes by introducing new performance metrics, their underlying principles, and their notable findings. Furthermore, the study synthesizes the fundamental characteristics of VLC-based positioning systems that need to be considered, presents several technology gaps based on the current state-of-the-art for future research endeavors, and summarizes our lessons learned towards the standardization of the performance evaluation.