2nd International ICST Conference on Scalable Information Systems

Research Article

A Model-Based WiFi Localization Method

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  • @INPROCEEDINGS{10.4108/infoscale.2007.903,
        author={Dik Lun Lee and Qiuxia Chen},
        title={A Model-Based WiFi Localization Method},
        proceedings={2nd International ICST Conference on Scalable Information Systems},
        proceedings_a={INFOSCALE},
        year={2010},
        month={5},
        keywords={location identification location tracking mobility floor model.},
        doi={10.4108/infoscale.2007.903}
    }
    
  • Dik Lun Lee
    Qiuxia Chen
    Year: 2010
    A Model-Based WiFi Localization Method
    INFOSCALE
    ICST
    DOI: 10.4108/infoscale.2007.903
Dik Lun Lee1,*, Qiuxia Chen1,*
  • 1: The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Department of Computer Science and Engineering Clear Water Bay, Hong Kong.
*Contact email: dlee@cse.ust.hk, chen@cse.ust.hk

Abstract

Due to the proliferation of WiFi access points, indoor localization methods based on WiFi signal strengths are becoming more and more attractive because they don’t require additional infrastructural costs beyond the existing WiFi infrastructure. Many research projects were proposed based on this approach, but most of them only focused on the processing of the signal strength data to obtain the user locations. Very little attention was paid to the mobility patterns of the users. In this paper, we propose a method based on (i) knowing the floor model, (ii) continual tracking of user locations and (iii) back-tracking from the current location to previous locations to resolve localization ambiguities. We implemented the system in a life environment and performed experiments to measure the localization accuracies. We found that our method identified all test paths accurately with the exception of a challenging case where two locations were connected together with a thin wall. We discuss ways to handle this situation.