A simple room localization method to find technology in a big trauma center

Abstract

Trauma Center is a big operating theatre of over 4000 m2 on two floors and 14 operating rooms. In this context, the share of the equipment is fundamental to reduce expedition but may cause an excessive loss of time by medical staff that needs devices for the clinical therapy. Therefore, knowing localization is useful for health monitoring of important electromedical devices. In recent years, a lot of technologies have been developed for the indoor localization, like the Bluetooth wireless standard technology. In particular, Beacon technology is very interesting, which uses the Bluetooth low energy (BLE) technology. However, due to the complexity of internal ambiences, the development of an indoor localization method is always associated with various problems, mainly for the presence of obstacles among the direction of propagation of signals. Application of BLE for the localization of medical equipment could help to save time during an emergency. With this preliminary study, using Beacon devices like tag, three mathematical average methods for reducing variability in indoor localization techniques are performed. Although mathematic average methods can reduce variability, it is very difficult to eliminate the calculation error of the tag-reader distance. Nevertheless, in this preliminary analysis the mathematical method using the average of RSSI measures present a constant error pattern, along distances, ranged between 0 and 8 m not too big for a room localization method.