Introduction

Indoor positioning is a mechanism whereby the location of a mobile device can be accurately tracked within an indoor environment. The market for location-based services has grown rapidly in the past few years and will continue to do so Zhang 2015. Indoor positioning applications including reactive indoor spaces, dynamic temperature control, wireless health,  augmented reality, precision advertisement, etc Martin 2014. Within the health industry indoor positioning may be used to track and locate equipment, patients, and staff members. Indoor positioning can be used for navigation inside shopping malls, airports, hospitals, and other large venues.
Bluetooth wireless technology has been on a steady and fast growth path from its initiation in 1989.  Since then, we have seen 4 versions of Bluetooth standards, with the newest version being adopted in June, 2010. This version, called Bluetooth Smart, is designed to improve upon past Bluetooth versions and facilitate Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE).  BLE allows for communication between very low power applications, giving way to new functionality. Showing promise is its use in indoor positioning, creating unique solutions for advertising, path finding, and business optimization. Our research will look at existing technologies and techniques for indoor positioning, then focus on the advantages of BLE as an indoor positioning solution, and finally do a qualitative comparison of proposed algorithms for BLE-based indoor positioning.