Received Signal Strength Fingerprint and Footprint Assisted Indoor Positioning Based on Ambient Wi-Fi Signals

Positioning is a basis for providing location information to mobile users. With the GPS signal strength hindered by the structure, indoor users cannot obtain their positions through their handheld devices. Indoor positioning has recently been conducted based on received signal strength (RSS) fingerprint from indoor wireless access devices. Integrating indoor position information with Smartphone can provide more precise in-building information. In this paper, we propose a novel indoor positioning scheme assisted by a RSS fingerprint and footprint architecture. Smartphone users can get their position based on RSSs from ambient Wi-Fi access points surrounding them. With the assistance of collecting RSSs from ambient Wi-Fi signals, confining RSSs by directions, and filtering burst noises, our propose scheme can overcome the severe signal fluctuation problem in the building. Meanwhile, the proposed RSS fingerprint and footprint matching mechanism can raise the accuracy of location estimation. The experiment results show that our proposed scheme can achieve a certain level of accuracy in the indoor environments and outperform other solutions.