Indoor/outdoor location of cellular handsets based on received signal strength

This paper demonstrates the feasibility of received signal strength (RSS) methods for locating wireless handset calls in a real cellular environment. An extensive measurement campaign conducted on the Georgia Institute of Technology campus indicates that RSS location techniques can locate handset calls within 100 m error distance to its ground truth up to 78% of the time and less than 300 m error distance up to 98% of the time for a network with a majority of indoor users. This is well above the safety requirements mandated by FCC in the USA. We also propose a received signal strength aggregate (RSSA) method for identifying and locating indoor handsets.