A novel approach for WLAN-based outdoor fingerprinting localization

These years, WLAN-based positioning technology developed rapidly due to the limitation of GPS in ”city canyon”. Some people try to apply the indoor fingerprint positioning technology in the outdoor environment. Unfortunately, they ignore the difference between the indoor and outdoor environment and can´t achieve preferable results. Considering more complex factors in outdoor environment, we propose a new approach called Common-APs(Access points)-Likelihood Algorithm, which uses the overlapping APs to measure the similarity among users and training points instead of the traditional Signal Strength (SS) information. Our experiment shows that our algorithm could improve the accuracy by 48.75% and reduce the time cost significantly. In addition, the proposed algorithm has strong robustness and could work much better in the busy downtown surrounding dense APs.