Available for an ArcGIS organization licensed with the ArcGIS IPS extension.
Existing indoor positioning system (IPS) patterns of use are identified based on the implementations of indoor positioning across a variety of areas, industries, regions, domain types, and organizations. Depending on the relevant use case (pattern) and the physical characteristics of the indoor environment, the achieved IPS performance might be deemed as excellent, satisfactory, poor, or even unacceptable. There are two methods for enabling indoor positioning: Bluetooth and Wi-Fi based.
Bluetooth-based indoor positioning, also referred to as radio-based, is at the core of ArcGIS Enterprise and performs best in well-defined areas with clearly defined typical walking patterns, good division of navigable zones and materials that facilitate such separation. Opposite environment characteristics, such as wide open areas (often with particularly high ceilings), large dominant reflective surfaces and materials that do not provide enough barriers or even unnaturally amplify signal distribution, negatively affect the performance and can pose challenges to accurate indoor position estimations. Other challenges to Bluetooth-powered indoor positioning can occur in unusually crowded circumstances such as convention center expo floors, open-floor office environments with low-wall or no cubicle divisions, as well as public transport waiting halls where large quantities of additional physical barriers prevent or distort the expected signal from reaching users’ devices. Similar disturbances can be caused by powerful or numerous electronic devices which too can create congestion to undisrupted BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) signal distribution.
Wi-Fi-based indoor positioning is regularly more resistant to such environmental circumstances, commonly performs comparably in the majority of environments and is less sensitive to circumstantial conditions.
Once the use cases that benefit from indoor positioning are clearly identified, to enable ArcGIS IPS at the facilities and organization, some requirements and prerequisites must be fulfilled.
- Obtain the following licenses and software:
- ArcGIS Enterprise portal or an ArcGIS Online organizational account licensed with the ArcGIS IPS organizational capability
ArcGIS IPS is accessible across Esri software and is integrated with the ArcGIS Indoors and ArcGIS Field Maps apps. These apps allow you to seamlessly access indoor positioning capabilities.
- ArcGIS Pro (with an ArcGIS IPS user type extension to access the Indoor Positioning toolbox)
- ArcGIS IPS Setup mobile app
- ArcGIS Enterprise portal or an ArcGIS Online organizational account licensed with the ArcGIS IPS organizational capability
- Configure the ArcGIS Enterprise portal or ArcGIS Online organization to enable access to the ArcGIS IPS functionality.
- Review the Bluetooth-based requirements or Wi-Fi-based requirements and complete the enablement workflows for Bluetooth-based indoor positioning or Wi-Fi-based indoor positioning.