An indoor location-based service using access points as signal strength data collectors

WLAN location determination algorithms can be classified into client-based approach and infrastructure-based approach. This paper proposes an infrastructure-based indoor location determination algorithm using access points (APs) as received signal strength (RSS) data collectors. Beside the role of RSS data collector, the APs can simultaneously play the role of communication. In the proposed system, each AP runs OpenWrt, Kismet, and MySQL client for collecting signal strength data from mobile devices. The location server builds a Nearest Neighborhood estimation model based on RSS measurements of the mobile device. In the example application, the system manager can easily collect training data and input location-aware contents using a web page. Once a mobile device enters the area with location-aware services, the AP will collect the RSS and IP of this device. Then when the mobile device connects to the web page provided by our system, the system will locate this device and show the location-based services to the user. The proposed system has the features of low deployment costs without additional hardware and a web-based interface for location-aware service content provider. Once the system is deployed, the content provider can easily create the location-aware services.