Providing technologies that localize occupants of a building will be needed for effective contract tracing as societies try to manage and contain the spread of COVID-19. Indoor localization methods that do not require the use of GPS but rather depend on existing communication networks offer a way to rapidly deploy technologies to aid in managing the number of occupants in a building, ensure social distance guidelines are being observed and allow detailed contact tracing. These technologies can operate over a range of wireless technologies including WiFi, UWB and IoT networks.
Patent #10,514,437: Device localization using RSS based path loss exponent estimation (https://patents.google.com/patent/US10514437B2/)
Patent #10,425,910: Localization using Millimeter Wave Communication Signals (https://patents.google.com/patent/US10425910B1/)
Patent #9,282,531: Method and system for localization of a device in an enclosed environment based on received signal strength levels (https://patents.google.com/patent/US9282531B1/)
Patent #8,054,226: Method for Estimating Location of Nodes in Wireless Networks (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8054226B2/)
Patent #7,729,659: Method for signaling quality of range estimates in UWB devices (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7729659B2/)
Image: Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories