Bluetooth Indoor Positioning and RTLS Implementations

ABI Research forecasts that, by 2026, there will be 634,858 Bluetooth indoor positioning and Real-Time Location System (RTLS) deployments globally, growing from just over 262,332 in 2021, achieving an almost 2.5X increase during this time.

For RTLS and indoor positioning tasks, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is becoming an increasingly vital technology with many implementations that target multiple market segments and use cases. An increasing interest in RTLS across manufacturing, healthcare, and warehousing and logistics enterprises, among others, combined with key Bluetooth features, such as minimal power consumption, very low hardware costs, strong accuracy, and high levels of interoperability among major vendors, have led many in the space to invest in BLE RTLS and indoor positioning solutions. Furthermore, within the existing base of RTLS implementations, higher tag volumes are being driven by larger-scale deployments and broader usage of tags in a variety of form factors, enabled by a wide range of Bluetooth solution providers.

Advances in the Bluetooth specification (e.g., Bluetooth 5.1 Angle of Arrival (AoA) and Angle of Departure (AoD) techniques, enabling sub-meter precision) and the ability to leverage Bluetooth-enabled Wi-Fi access points for location services are expanding the Bluetooth location ecosystem, providing additional signal coverage and additional market reach. Universal smartphone compatibility provides further interoperability for affordable indoor positioning solutions, combined with BLE beacons, while the demand for more open, interoperable, and scalable RTLS ecosystems places Bluetooth in a strong position to take advantage of the need for digital transformation enabled by indoor positioning across numerous market verticals.