An effective tracking system based on Wi-Fi trajectory matching

This paper presents a tracking system based on trajectory matching in WiFi network. When a user equipment appears in the monitored area, the system continuously intercepts WiFi beacon messages which are periodically issued by the user´s equipments for finding accessable WiFi access point (AP). The system then infers the user´s trajectory based on the MAC address and received signal strength indication (RSSI) indicated in the beacon message. We propose an estimation method to match the received electronic signal series along a user´s trajectory to the most possible one of the predefined paths. The method mainly uses the variance of RSSI to determine the user pedistrian path. We develop a system prototype and conduct extensive experiments in real experimental environment. The experimental results show that the success rate is up to 68%, which proves that the method is applicable. Our tracking system can be widely applied in miscellaneous public spaces for a variety of applications, e.g., public park navigation.