Investigation and Testing of Location Systems Using WiFi in Indoor Environments

Many applications in the area of location-based services and personal navigation require nowadays the location determination of a user not only in outdoor environment but also indoor. To locate a person or object in a building, systems that use either infrared, ultrasonic or radio signals, and visible light for optical tracking have been developed. The use of WiFi for location determination has the advantage that no transmitters or receivers have to be installed in the building like in the case of infrared and ultrasonic based location systems. WiFi positioning technology adopts IEEE802.11x standard, by observing the radio signals from access points installed inside a building. These access points can be found nowadays in our daily environment, e.g. in many office buildings, public spaces and in urban areas. The principle of operation of location determination using WiFi signals is based on the measurement of the signal strengths to the surrounding available access points at a mobile terminal (e.g. PDA, notebook PC). An estimate of the location of the terminal is then obtained on the basis of these measurements and a signal propagation model inside the building. The signal propagation model can be obtained using simulations or with prior calibration measurements at known locations in an offline phase. The most common location determination approach is based on signal propagation patterns, namely WiFi fingerprinting. In this paper the underlying technology is briefly reviewed followed by an investigation of two WiFi positioning systems. Testing of the system is performed in two localization test beds, one at the Vienna University of Technology and the second at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. First test showed that the trajectory of a moving user could be obtained with a standard deviation of about ${\pm}$ 3 m.