Accurate Indoor Location Estimation by Incorporating the Importance of Access Points in Wireless Local Area Networks

Abstract-This study focuses on indoor localization in Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs). We investigate the unequal contribution of each access point (AP) on location estimation. The main contribution is two parts. First, a novel mechanism is proposed to measure the degrees of the AP importance. The importance of each AP is quantified by the signal discrimination between distinct locations. We utilize such numerical relevancies to select important APs for positioning. Second, the importance is further embedded into our positioning system. We provide a weighted kernel function where the effect of APs is differentiated. That is, the larger weights are assigned to the more important APs. Moreover, we develop a quasi-entropy function to avoid an abrupt change on the weights. Our positioning system is developed in a real-worldWLAN environment, where the realistic measurement of receive signal strength (RSS) is collected. Experimental results show that the positioning accuracy is significantly improved by taking the different importance into consideration.