Bluetooth and IEEE 802.11 (Wi-Fi) are two communication protocol standards that define a physical layer and a MAC layer for wireless communications within a short range (from a few meters up to 100 m) with low power consumption (from less than 1 mW up to 100 mW). Bluetooth is oriented to connecting close devices, serving as a substitute for cables, while Wi-Fi is oriented toward computer-to-computer connections, as an extension of or substitution for cabled LANs. In this article we offer an overview of these popular wireless communication standards, comparing their main features and behaviors in terms of various metrics, including capacity, network topology, security, quality of service support, and power consumption.

In recent years, indoor localization systems have been the object of significant research activity and of growing interest for their great expected social impact and their impressive business potential. Application areas include tracking and navigation, activity monitoring, personalized advertising, Active and Assisted Living (AAL), traceability, Internet of Things (IoT) networks, and Home-land Security. In spite of the numerous research advances and the great industrial interest, no canned solutions have yet been defined. The diversity and heterogeneity of applications, scenarios, sensor and user requirements, make it difficult to create uniform solutions. From that diverse reality, a main problem is derived that consists in the lack of a consensus both in terms of the metrics and the procedures used to measure the performance of the different indoor localization and navigation proposals. This paper introduces the general lines of the EvAAL benchmarking framework, which is aimed at a fair comparison of indoor positioning systems through a challenging competition under complex, realistic conditions. To evaluate the framework capabilities, we show how it was used in the 2016 Indoor Positioning and Indoor Navigation (IPIN) Competition. The 2016 IPIN competition considered three different scenario dimensions, with a variety of use cases: (1) pedestrian versus robotic navigation, (2) smartphones versus custom hardware usage and (3) real-time positioning versus off-line post-processing. A total of four competition tracks were evaluated under the same EvAAL benchmark framework in order to validate its potential to become a standard for evaluating indoor localization solutions. The experience gained during the competition and feedback from track organizers and competitors showed that the EvAAL framework is flexible enough to successfully fit the very different tracks and appears adequate to compare indoor positioning systems.

Evaluation of ambient assisted living (AAL) systems is particularly challenging due to the complexity of such systems and the variety of solutions adopted and services offered. Yet analyzing and comparing AAL solutions is paramount for assessing research results in this area. Evaluating AAL Systems through Competitive Benchmarking (EvAAL) is a recently established international competition that aims to address this problem, letting benchmarking and comparison methodologies of AAL systems emerge from experience. Here, the authors describes the first EvAAL competition, which was devoted to localization and tracking. They also review the proposed evaluation criteria, benchmarks, and results. All evaluation data is freely available from the EvAAL website.

Every year, for ten years now, the IPIN competition has aimed at evaluating real-world indoor localisation systems by testing them in a realistic environment, with realistic movement, using the EvAAL framework. The competition provided a unique overview of the state-of-the-art of systems, technologies, and methods for indoor positioning and navigation purposes. Through fair comparison of the performance achieved by each system, the competition was able to identify the most promising approaches and to pinpoint the most critical working conditions. In 2020, the competition included 5 diverse off-site off-site Tracks, each resembling real use cases and challenges for indoor positioning. The results in terms of participation and accuracy of the proposed systems have been encouraging. The best performing competitors obtained a third quartile of error of 1 m for the Smartphone Track and 0.5 m for the Foot-mounted IMU Track. While not running on physical systems, but only as algorithms, these results represent impressive achievements.

IPIN 2019 Competition, sixth in a series of IPIN competitions, was held at the CNR Research Area of Pisa (IT), integrated into the program of the IPIN 2019 Conference. It included two on-site real-time Tracks and three off-site Tracks. The four Tracks presented in this paper were set in the same environment, made of two buildings close together for a total usable area of 1000 m 2 outdoors and and 6000 m 2 indoors over three floors, with a total path length exceeding 500 m. IPIN competitions, based on the EvAAL framework, have aimed at comparing the accuracy performance of personal positioning systems in fair and realistic conditions: past editions of the competition were carried in big conference settings, university campuses and a shopping mall. Positioning accuracy is computed while the person carrying the system under test walks at normal walking speed, uses lifts and goes up and down stairs or briefly stops at given points. Results presented here are a showcase of state-of-the-art systems tested side by side in real-world settings as part of the on-site real-time competition Tracks. Results for off-site Tracks allow a detailed and reproducible comparison of the most recent positioning and tracking algorithms in the same environment as the on-site Tracks.

The increasing demand for services and higher comfort levels inside buildings, together with the rise in time spent indoor, ensure an upward trend in indoor localization demand for the future. Evaluation of indoor localization systems is particularly challenging due to the complexity of such systems and to the variety of solutions adopted and services offered. EvAAL is an international competition aimed at evaluating and assessing indoor localization systems. The fifth edition of EvAAL promotes competitions on indoor localization in large environments. This paper describes its technical aspects, the competing systems and the results.