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androidiphonelocationibeaconandroid-ibeacon

Does ibeacon require a calibration phase?


I'd like to know if iBeacons require a calibration phase (i.e, like Wi-Fi fingerprinting).

When trying to measure location based on Wi-Fi signal strength there's a need to do an arbitrary prior scan at the location you want to map.

I'd like to know if Iphone/Android already gets a fair coordinate based on ibeacons signal without a map phase.


Solution

  • If you want accurate distance estimates, then yes, it requires calibration.

    However, it is not as temperamental as the wifi calibration. And often you can use the default calibration that comes with the particular iBeacon hardware.

    For example my company, Radius Networks, makes a number of iBeacon hardware solutions and those are calibrated here in our lab. While environmental changes will effect that setting it often doesn't change things too drastically. For the most part the factory setting will be just fine for many use cases.

    Obviously this is not the case if there is some drastic interference, such as installing the iBeacon behind a metal wall, or in a room that will be very crowded (people are notorious for absorbing RF). In those cases it would be best to recalibrate the beacon.

    One difference to note about beacon calibration vs. something like wifi calibration, is that the beacon is configured to broadcast a calibration value. That value represents the expected RSSI that a phone will see at 1 meter away. That is then used to interpolate the distance estimate.