Abstract: To solve the special electromagnetic environment and the narrow space for ship cabins of steel structures which lead to the increase of positioning error due to the unstable signal propagation of traditional wireless positioning technology,the Bluetooth Received Signal Strength Indication (RSSI) at different positions in the cabin was collected in the research ship,and the spatiotemporal distribution characteristics of Bluetooth signal strength were analyzed,and the spatial propagation loss model of Bluetooth wireless signal was constructed. For the data noise,the extended Kalman filter algorithm is used to smooth the RSSI. At the same time,to reduce the complexity of target position estimation and improve positioning accuracy,a multi-lateral least squares positioning algorithm is adopted,with positioning accuracy optimized by integrating fixed-point information and a map-matching algorithm. The experimental results show that on the basis of using the adapted Bluetooth signal propagation loss model,the fusion positioning algorithm can effectively solve the problem of error increase caused by frequent reflection and refraction of Bluetooth signals in narrow areas such as corridors,and significantly improve the positioning accuracy of ship cabins to 0. 61 m. Therefore,the intelligent ship cabin personnel perception method based on signal strength and map matching can realize high-precision positioning of personnel,and help the intelligent management and emergency rescue of ship cabin personnel.