Enhanced indoor locationing in a congested Wi-Fi environment (original) (raw)

Enhancing Indoor Positioning Systems Accuracy with Optimal Placement of Wi-Fi Access Points

Jordan Journal of Electrical Engineering, 2024

The indoor positioning system (IPS) has generated a considerable amount of interest in recent times, and the prosperity of the system's development is heavily reliant on its ability to accurately locate objects. The performance measure is significantly impacted by the location of access points (APs). However, the bulk of previous studies have tended to overlook the matter of optimal AP placement and efficient design for IPS due to the dependence on pre-existing installed APs, which were chiefly formulated for coverage objectives. In this investigation, an optimal placement function-which is reliant on mean and variance-has been developed using received signal strength (RSS) measurements data. The performance evaluation in this research is based on experimentation and compared with currently employed placement methods. The results indicate that the most optimal function value for the suggested method is 1.5714, which is substantially smaller than the values for rectangular, triangular, and triangular II, which are 12.468, 5.5364, and 8.5147, respectively. When the recommended placement strategy is employed instead of the existing ones, the weighted K-nearest algorithm (WKNN) for location error, using average RSS as the fingerprint radio map database, yielded a heightened degree of precision.

Estimating Location Using Wi-Fi

IEEE Expert / IEEE Intelligent Systems, 2008

R ecent advances in pervasive computing and mobile technology have enabled accurate location and activity tracking of users wearing wireless devices indoors, where GPS isn't available. A practical way to do this is by leveraging the Wi-Fi signals that a mobile client receives from various access points. For example, many indoor location estimation techniques use received radio signal strength (RSS) values and radio signal propagation models to track users. Machine learning-based methods have proven among the most accurate.

On the efficacy of WiFi indoor positioning in a practical setting

2013 IEEE Symposium on Computers and Communications (ISCC), 2013

We implement two popular WiFi, fingerprinting based indoor tracking mechanisms, namely the k-nearest neighbours and probabilistic positioning methods. Both mechanisms are evaluated in the context of an indoor position-tracking tablet application, following an investigation to determine optimal working parameters. Our results indicate that even after significant optimisation, both fingerprinting algorithms are highly sensitive to the location of the access points and do not produce finely grained location results. Although in this case the results are accurate enough for our purposes, factors such as the effect of natural body obstruction of the user as well as the location of the access points used in fingerprinting must be considered carefully if more accuracy is required.

Indoor localization without the pain

2010

While WiFi-based indoor localization is attractive, the need for a significant degree of pre-deployment effort is a key challenge. In this paper, we ask the question: can we perform indoor localization with no pre-deployment effort? Our setting is an indoor space, such as an office building or a mall, with WiFi coverage but where we do not assume knowledge of the physical layout, including the placement of the APs. Users carrying WiFi-enabled devices such as smartphones traverse this space in normal course. The mobile devices record Received Signal Strength (RSS) measurements corresponding to APs in their view at various (unknown) locations and report these to a localization server. Occasionally, a mobile device will also obtain and report a location fix, say by obtaining a GPS lock at the entrance or near a window. The centerpiece of our work is the EZ Localization algorithm, which runs on the localization server. The key intuition is that all of the observations reported to the se...

Indoor Location Prediction Using Multiple Wireless Received Signal Strengths

2008

This paper presents a framework for indoor location prediction system using multiple wireless signals available freely in public or office spaces. We first propose an abstract architectural design for the system, outlining its key components and their functionalities. Different from existing works, such as robot indoor localization which requires as precise localization as possible, our work focuses on a higher grain: location prediction. Such a problem has a great implication in context-aware systems such as indoor navigation or smart self-managed mobile devices (e.g., battery management). Central to these systems is an effective method to perform location prediction under different constraints such as dealing with multiple wireless sources, effects of human body heats or mobility of the users. To this end, the second part of this paper presents a comparative and comprehensive study on different choices for modeling signals strengths and prediction methods under different condition settings. The results show that with simple, but effective modeling method, almost perfect prediction accuracy can be achieved in the static environment, and up to 85% in the presence of human movements. Finally, adopting the proposed framework we outline a fully developed system, named Marauder, that support user interface interaction and real-time voice-enabled location prediction.

On the Placement of Wi-Fi Access Points for Indoor Localization

2013

Nowadays, the more and more popular location based applications require accurate position information even in indoor environments. Wireless technologies can be used to derive positioning data. Especially, the Wi-Fi technology is popular for indoor localization because the existing and almost ubiquitous worldwide Wi-Fi infrastructure can be reused lowering the expenses. However, the primary purpose of these Wi-Fi systems is different from being used for positioning services, thus the accuracy they provide might be low. This accuracy can be increased by carefully placing the Wi-Fi access points to cover the given territory appropriately. In this paper, we propose a simulated annealing based method to find, in a given area, the optimal number and placement of Wi-Fi access points to be used for indoor positioning. We investigate the performance of our method via simulations.

Optimization of Wi-Fi Access Point Placement for Indoor Localization

The popularity of location based applications is undiminished today. They require accurate location information which is a challenging issue in indoor environments. Wireless technologies can help derive indoor positioning data. Especially, the Wi-Fi technology is a promising candidate due to the existing and almost ubiquitous Wi-Fi infrastructure. The already deployed Wi-Fi devices can also serve as reference points for localization eliminating the cost of setting up a dedicated system. However, the primary purpose of these Wi-Fi systems is data communication and not providing location services. Thus their positioning accuracy might be insufficient. This accuracy can be increased by carefully placing the Wi-Fi access points to cover the given territory properly. In this paper, our contribution is a method based on simulated annealing, what we propose to find the optimal number and placement of Wi-Fi access points with regard to indoor positioning. We investigate its performance in a real environment scenario via simulations.

Improving Accuracy and Simplifying Training in Fingerprinting-Based Indoor Location Algorithms at Room Level

Mobile Information Systems, 2016

Fingerprinting-based algorithms are popular in indoor location systems based on mobile devices. Comparing the RSSI (Received Signal Strength Indicator) from different radio wave transmitters, such as Wi-Fi access points, with prerecorded fingerprints from located points (using different artificial intelligence algorithms), fingerprinting-based systems can locate unknown points with a few meters resolution. However, training the system with already located fingerprints tends to be an expensive task both in time and in resources, especially if large areas are to be considered. Moreover, the decision algorithms tend to be of high memory and CPU consuming in such cases and so does the required time for obtaining the estimated location for a new fingerprint. In this paper, we study, propose, and validate a way to select the locations for the training fingerprints which reduces the amount of required points while improving the accuracy of the algorithms when locating points at room level ...

A new method for improving Wi-Fi-based indoor positioning accuracy

Wi-Fi and smartphone based positioning technologies are play-ing a more and more important role in Location Based Service (LBS) industries due to the rapid development of the smartphone market. However, the low positioning accuracy of these technologies is still an issue for indoor positioning. To ad-dress this problem, a new method for improving the indoor posi-tioning accuracy was developed. The new method initially used the Nearest Neighbor (NN) algorithm of the fingerprinting meth-od to identify the initial position estimate of the smartphone us-er. Then two distance correction values in two roughly perpen-dicular directions were calculated by the path loss model based on the two signal strength indicator (RSSI) values observed. The errors from the path loss model were eliminated by differencing two model-derived distances from the same access point. The new method was tested and the results compared and assessed against that of the commercial Ekahau RTLS system and the NN algorithm. The preliminary results showed that the positioning accuracy has been improved consistently after the new method was applied and the root mean square accuracy improved to 3.3 m from 3.8 m compared with the NN algorithm.