Properties of indoor received signal strength for WLAN location fingerprinting

Indoor positioning systems that make use of received signal strength based location fingerprints and existing wireless local area network infrastructure have recently been the focus for supporting location-based services in indoor and campus areas. A knowledge and understanding of the properties of the location fingerprint can assist in improving design of algorithms and deployment of position location systems. However, most existing research work ignores the radio signal properties. This paper investigates the properties of the received signal strength reported by IEEE 802.11b wireless network interface cards. Analyses of the data are performed to understand the underlying features of location fingerprints. The performance of an indoor positioning system in terms of its precision is compared using measured data and a Gaussian model to see how closely a Gaussian model may fit the measured data.