A Study on Room-Level Accuracy of Wi-Fi Fingerprinting-Based Indoor Localization Systems

Abstract

Global positioning system and other outdoor positioning mechanisms are already subject to comprehensiveresearch and development for almost half a century. Conversely, indoor positioning services became a hottopic in the last decade. Since GPS (and. other outdoor solutions) do not work reliably in most indoorenvironments, researchers and developers are working on accurate positioning solutions, especially tailoredfor indoor places. However; due to walls, furniture, people and other obstacles, absolute location estimationis very hard and expensive to achieve in indoor places. In addition, accuracy needs depend on the scenarioand application. In this study, we have studied the feasibility of room-level location detection in home andoffice environments. We have focused on examining the quality of room-wise detection accuracy of thefingerprinting method that is applied along with standard Wi-Fi radio infrastructure. We have conductedexperiments in a multi-storey office building made of concrete and aerated concrete bricks with manyrooms, in which it is significantly hard to accurately estimate the correct place of a thing, using radio signals.To the best of our knowledge, our paper is the first study that investigates the room-level accuracy of Wi-Fi fingerprinting-based indoor localization systems. We have found out that, it is possible to feasibly achieveroom-level detection with good accuracy, via a pre-calculated room-specific received signal strengthindicator threshold value.