Towards an efficient indoor navigation system: a near field communication approach (original) (raw)

Introduction: Navigation systems provide time and location information for easy and accurate navigation in a specified environment. While Global Positioning System (GPS) has recorded a considerable success for navigating outdoors, the absence of GPS indoors has made orientation in indoor environment challenging. With existing technologies and methods of indoor positioning and navigation being complex, inaccurate, expensive and challenging to implement, usability of these technologies become limited. This limitation makes it difficult and time consuming to locate a destination indoors. Hence, recent works with Near Field Communication (NFC) has kindled interest in positioning and navigation. Purpose: This research focuses on providing interventions to alleviate usability challenges, in order to strengthen the overall accuracy and the navigation effectiveness in indoor and stringent environments through the experiential manipulation of technical attributes of the positioning and navigation system. Design/Methodology/Approach: The study followed a quantitative and experimental method of empirical enquiry, and software engineering and synthesis research methods. The study further entails three implementation processes namely map generation, positioning framework and navigation service using a prototype mobile navigation application that uses the NFC technology. Originality/Value: While navigating, users face several challenges, such as infrastructure complexity, high-cost solution, inaccuracy and usability. Hence as a contribution, this paper presents a symbolic map and path architecture of a floor of the test-bed building that was uploaded to OpenStreetMap. Furthermore, the implementation of the RFID and the NFC architectures produced new insight on how to redress the limitations in challenged spaces. In addition, a prototype mobile indoor navigation application was developed and implemented, offering novel solution to the practical problems inhibiting navigation in indoor challenged spaces – a practical contribution to the community of practice. Findings: The approach and findings revealed that the capability of NFC in leveraging its low-cost infrastructure of passive tags, its availability in mobile devices and the ubiquity of the mobile device provided a cost-effective solution with impressive accuracy and usability. The positioning accuracy achieved was less than 9 cm. The usability improved from 44% to 96% based on feedbacks given by respondents who tested the application in an indoor environment. These showed that NFC is a viable alternative to resolve the challenges identified in previous solutions and technologies. Keywords: Indoor Environments, Indoor Navigation, Indoor Positioning, Localisation, Mobile Device, Near Field Communication, NFC, NFC tag, Radio-Frequency Identification, RFID tag, Usability, Wayfinding Paper Type: Research Paper