Enhancing Smart Tourism in Mountainous Areas with BLE Beacon and GNSS-Based Proximity Detection

Abstract

Accurate positioning in mountainous and forested environments remains challenging for tourist assistance applications. This study proposes a hybrid proximity detection method that integrates Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) gating with Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) refinement. The system first detects the user’s approach using GNSS and then estimates the point of closest approach based on BLE RSSI variations or packet reception counts. Experiments were conducted at the Senjogahara Nature Exploration Trail in Nikko, Japan, which includes both forested sections and flat open areas. In Senjogahara, GNSS achieved the highest positioning accuracy under normal conditions; however, its performance degraded under dense forest canopy. Even in such conditions, the hybrid method incorporating BLE-based refinement maintained more stable performance than the GNSS-only approach. Additional experiments were also conducted in a flat urban area, specifically at a university rugby field. In these experiments, the proposed method using a BLE reception-count trigger achieved the smallest
positioning error, outperforming both the BLE-only and GNSS-only methods.