The invention provides an indoor real-time positioning method and system based on a path element network model. Common characteristics of an indoor physical environment are expressed by the path element model, path element attributes comprise nodes, connecting lines, path vectors and virtual display points, and the path element network model of indoor positioning is formed by communicative path elements. Therefore, real-time positioning and display can be simplified as accurate identification and distance control of each path element node on the model, then matching to a vector electronic mapby regarding the path element network model as the basis is performed for display, data processing regarding path elements as the basis and error elimination forwardly move rear-end centralized processing to form more accurate distributed front-end processing with higher efficiency so that a positioning system expressed in a room-scale qualitative mode is realized, complex calculation or learningtraining is avoided, the positioning response performance is not influenced by the target quantity and the complex environment, and the method is essentially different from positioning methods expressed by quantitative coordinates such as a triangulation method and a fingerprinting method.