# An Overview of Indoor Positioning and Mapping Technology Standards
## 3 Requirements and Architecture of IPMN Standards System  
Although research on indoor positioning, mapping, and navigation show great advances over the past two decades, as observed from literature, there are still several technical and non-technical challenges in the development of LBS, including indoor positioning, availability of indoor maps, and location privacy [4]. In terms of positioning technologies, reliable, accurate, inexpensive, seamless, indoor/outdoor positioning is needed for many LBS applications, particularly concerning safety and security applications, which are potentially life-saving such as emergency services. For indoor maps, issues such as the complexity for modeling and analysis, contextual information inference, data storage, and streaming, together with privacy concerns comprise quite a challenge considering map coverage and availability of the content [4]. The biggest challenge is lack of standardization [5], even though several IPMN standards have been published, as mentioned previously. In particular, there is no standard that can serve as a guide for designing localization and proximity techniques [5]. Current IPMNstandards have been developed by various SDOs for specific purposes; for example, ISO 17438--developed by ISO Technical Committee (TC) 204--identifies the requirements and use cases for ITS navigation, and they do not specify either indoor positioning technologies and reference data or indoor map formats. Furthermore, the requirements and use cases may vary from one application (for example, safety and security applications) to another (for example, ITS or assets management). From the perspective of IPMN standards and system theory, this paper focuses on the re-thinking of the IPMN standards system. First of all, we need to study the basic information theories, concepts, and models behind the existing and emerging IPMN technologies, asking for instance, such as what is the underlying theory of IPMN? Secondly, from the viewpoint of engineering, can current technologies, standards and systems meet the requirements of most applications? And finally, what can we do to tackle the IPMN problem in the coming years? Therefore, regarding the whole process of IPMN, which includes positioning equipment deployment, indoor map data acquisition and organization, indoor and outdoor seamless positioning and navigation services, and testing and evaluation, we summarize the IPMN requirements as follows. 1. Positioning device deployment. Indoor positioning technology can be divided as one requiring external equipment and the other, device-free. When utilizing external equipment, such as WIFI, as positioning method, deployment of equipment in indoor scene is needed in advance. Standardization in this stage is required in choosing a deployment method and the equipment and testing method suitable for indoor environments. 2. Indoor map data acquisition and organization. Indoor positioning cannot be separated from the visualization of indoor scenes. First, indoor map data models must be built to express indoor scenes explicitly. Second, standards for data acquisition and organization are required because indoor maps are usually limited by wireless network transmission rates and mobile network terminal resolution. In addition, map visualization of large-scale indoor spaces should consider the expression of symbols, color, and semantic information, which also needs relevant standards. 3. Seamless indoor and outdoor positioning and navigation services. In large-scale applications, only indoor positioning is not of practical significance. When the environment of pedestrians switches from indoors to outdoors, the corresponding location method, map data, and coordinate system should be switched accordingly, meaning that there must be provision of standards for these transformations. For the final development of an integrated multi-mode indoor positioning systems, software and related protocol standards are required. To achieve navigation, standards for navigation models are a requirement. 4.