A New Three‐Dimensional Indoor Positioning Mechanism Based on Wireless LAN

Network traffic classification is the process of analyzing traffic flows and associating them to different categories of network applications. Network traffic classification represents an essential task in the whole chain of network security. Some of the most important and widely spread applications of traffic classification are the ability to classify encrypted traffic, the identification of malicious traffic flows, and the enforcement of security policies on the use of different applications. Passively monitoring a network utilizing low-cost and low-complexity wireless local area network (WLAN) devices is desirable. Mobile devices can be used or existing office desktops can be temporarily utilized when their computational load is low. This reduces the burden on existing network hardware. The aim of this paper is to investigate traffic classification techniques for wireless communications. To aid with intrusion detection, the key goal is to passively monitor and classify different traffic types over WLAN to ensure that network security policies are adhered to. The classification of encrypted WLAN data poses some unique challenges not normally encountered in wired traffic. WLAN traffic is analyzed for features that are then used as an input to six different machine learning (ML) algorithms for traffic classification. One of these algorithms (a Gaussian mixture model incorporating a universal background model) has not been applied to wired or wireless network classification before. The authors also propose a ML algorithm that makes use of the well-known vector quantization algorithm in conjunction with a decision tree—referred to as a TRee Adaptive Parallel Vector Quantiser. This algorithm has a number of advantages over the other ML algorithms tested and is suited to wireless traffic classification. An average F-score (harmonic mean of precision and recall) > 0.84 was achieved when training and testing on the same day across six distinct traffic types.

The Global Positioning System (GPS) has eventually become a common positioning technology. While GPS enabled many applications, satellite signals have yet to overcome many obstacles to enable indoor positioning. Meanwhile, due to the wide deployment of Wireless Local Area Networks (WLAN) in recent years, WLAN positioning algorithms have become popular for mobile device positioning in indoor environments. The most accurate WLAN positioning algorithms exploit the so-called fingerprinting concept which consists of two stages. In the offline stage (training), the Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) from a set of available Access Points (AP) is measured for a number of reference locations and stored in a database. Due to the availability of many APs and the complex structure of indoor environments, this information is distinctive for each reference location and thus is called a position fingerprint. In the online stage (testing), a mobile device receives RSSIs from the APs and their fingerprint is compared to the fingerprints that are stored in the database for a best possible match. WLAN fingerprinting can provide high accuracy in indoor environments when there are many APs which ensure fingerprint uniqueness. This paper provides a novel approach to use WLAN multipath signals as possible fingerprints for positioning algorithms for applications with lower number of access points. The paper provides an initial study.

Due to the wide deployment of wireless local area networks (WLANs) and the easy acquirement of received signal strength (RSS), indoor localization based on RSS has attracted considerable attention in both academia and industry. In this paper, we extract the scatter factor from RSS and then propose a novel indoor localization scheme based on location fingerprinting and curve fitting techniques. The scheme is set up in two phases. In the offline phase, we create a fingerprint and apply the curve fitting technique to construct fitted RSS-distance functions in LOS (Line Of Sight) and NLOS (None Line Of Sight) condition, respectively. In online positioning phase, the proposed optimized fingerprinting-based localization algorithm (OFPL) uses trilateration technique to assist the fingerprinting localization in choosing the proper location of the receiver. Through conducting field and extensive experiments, we can draw the conclusion that our proposed algorithm can obtain some improvement in localization accuracy compared with the classical fingerprinting-based localization.

Wireless local area networks (WLANs) have become a promising choice for indoor positioning as the only existing and established infrastructure, to localize the mobile and stationary users indoors. However, since WLANs have been initially designed for wireless networking and not positioning, the localization task based on WLAN signals has several challenges. Amongst the WLAN positioning methods, WLAN fingerprinting localization has recently garnered great attention due to its promising performance. Notwithstanding, WLAN fingerprinting faces several challenges and hence, in this paper, our goal is to overview these challenges and corresponding state-of-the-art solutions. This paper consists of three main parts: 1) conventional localization schemes; 2) state-of-the-art approaches; and 3) practical deployment challenges. Since all proposed methods in the WLAN literature have been conducted and tested in different settings, the reported results are not readily comparable. So, we compare some of the representative localization schemes in a single real environment and assess their localization accuracy, positioning error statistics, and complexity. Our results depict illustrative evaluation of the approaches in the literature and guide to future improvement opportunities.

Location based service (LBS) cannot be realized unless the location of the user is available. For indoor LBS, indoor positioning must be utilized and many researchers have been working on indoor positioning and tracking. For example, extended Kalman filter (EKF) was exploited in Bluetooth based indoor positioning. Nowadays, WLAN (wireless local area network) is available virtually everywhere. Thus, WLAN based indoor positioning and tracking is more economical than Bluetooth based ones. The main purpose of this paper is to propose a new WLAN based EKF indoor tracking method by extending existing Bluetooth based EKF positioning method. Experimental results comparing our method with other previous methods are discussed.

Recently, indoor positioning systems have attracted a great deal of research attention, as they have a variety of applications in the fields of science and industry. In this study, we propose an innovative and easily implemented solution for indoor positioning. The solution is based on an indoor visible light positioning system and dual-function machine learning (ML) algorithms. Our solution increases positioning accuracy under the negative effect of multipath reflections and decreases the computational time for ML algorithms. Initially, we perform a noise reduction process to eliminate low-intensity reflective signals and minimize noise. Then, we divide the floor of the room into two separate areas using the ML classification function. This significantly reduces the computational time and partially improves the positioning accuracy of our system. Finally, the regression function of those ML algorithms is applied to predict the location of the optical receiver. By using extensive computer simulations, we have demonstrated that the execution time required by certain dual-function algorithms to determine indoor positioning is decreased after area division and noise reduction have been applied. In the best case, the proposed solution took 78.26% less time and provided a 52.55% improvement in positioning accuracy.

Due to the wide deployment of wireless local area networks (WLAN), received signal strength (RSS)-based indoor WLAN localization has attracted considerable attention in both academia and industry. In this paper, we propose a novel page rank-based indoor mapping and localization (PRIMAL) by using the gene-sequenced unlabeled WLAN RSS for simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM). Specifically, first of all, based on the observation of the motion patterns of the people in the target environment, we use the Allen logic to construct the mobility graph to characterize the connectivity among different areas of interest. Second, the concept of gene sequencing is utilized to assemble the sporadically-collected RSS sequences into a signal graph based on the transition relations among different RSS sequences. Third, we apply the graph drawing approach to exhibit both the mobility graph and signal graph in a more readable manner. Finally, the page rank (PR) algorithm is proposed to construct the mapping from the signal graph into the mobility graph. The experimental results show that the proposed approach achieves satisfactory localization accuracy and meanwhile avoids the intensive time and labor cost involved in the conventional location fingerprinting-based indoor WLAN localization.

Indoor localization based on Received Signal Strengths (RSS) or on some form of power measurements is a low-cost and low-complexity solution gaining more and more interest in the research and commercial worlds. Typically, Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) signals are employed for such purpose, due to the fact that they are widely spread in indoor environments. Nevertheless, any wireless signal available in indoor scenarios can be used for positioning based on similar power measurement approaches. One example is the radio frequency identification (RFID), which enable portable localization systems in the form of wearable REID tags. Such RFID-enabled systems are highly demanded for health-state monitoring, object tracking, and security. These applications are mostly indoor applications, and thus, we can envision a near future where multiple RFID and WLAN signals will co-exist on multiple frequency bands. The existing signal diversity can offer a benefit in indoor positioning, providing that the signal propagation effects for both WLAN and RFID are well understood and taken into account. However, measurement-based studies on indoor channel modeling, including path loss and shadowing effects of RFID signals are still missing. A comparison between RFII) and WLAN channel models for positioning purpose has yet to be made. It is the purpose of our paper to address the path-loss channel models and shadowing effects for WLAN and RFID signals based on extensive measurement campaigns in an office environment.

The idea of smart and sustainable cities is incomplete without using information and communication technologies. Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) plays a vital role in connecting different services, transferring data and providing indoor localization. WLAN fingerprinting technique has become the most common approach for indoor localization in smart cities. This technique utilizes received signal strength (RSS) and channel status from the installed WLAN Access Points (AP). Currently, WLAN planning relies on the site survey, which is laborious and uneconomical for large areas. The WLAN has a limited number of channels assigned in the frequency reuse strategy. An inefficient channel assignment strategy will lead towards increased interference, thus degrading the overall service. This paper proposes a WLAN channel assignment strategy for large and crowded indoor areas. The proposed scheme assigns the channels to installed APs for indoor localization in fingerprinting framework. The proposed technique ensures that the proposed AP channel assignment algorithm in our network-planning scheme mitigates interference.

The indoor localization systems based on wireless local area network received signal strength (RSS) have been widely applied due to the simplicity of system deployment as well as easy implementation on various mobile devices like the smartphones. However, they are often suffered by the major drawback of the extensive effort for location fingerprinting which is significantly labor-intensive and time-consuming. In response to this compelling problem, we design an improved manifold alignment approach to construct a cost-efficient radio map which consists of the sparsely collected location fingerprints and crowdsourcing RSS data with the purpose of reducing the overall fingerprints calibration effort. A new graph construction scheme which is proved to be the optimal choice to model the smoothness assumption in semi-supervised learning is proposed to explore the informativeness conveyed by location fingerprints during the process of radio map construction. In addition, the concept of execution characteristic function is considered to minimize the RSS sample capacity at each reference point to reduce fingerprints calibration effort further. Finally, the extensive experimental results demonstrate the performance improvement by the proposed system with the probability of localization errors within 3 m, 79.60%, which is at most 26.30 percentages higher than the one by the existing systems using location fingerprints solely.

Recently, machine learning (ML) has been widely adopted for fingerprint-based indoor localization because of its potency in delineating relationships between received signal strength (RSS) information and labels accurately. Existing ML-based indoor localization systems are less robust because they only adopt the output with the highest probability. This affects the final location estimate, hence compromising accuracy due to the severity of RSS fluctuations. Since different ML algorithms (MLAs) yield different performances, it is therefore intuitive to fuse predictions from multiple MLAs to improve the positioning performance in the presence of signal fluctuation. In this article, we propose SmartLoc, a smart wireless indoor localization framework to enhance indoor localization. In the offline phase, multiple MLAs are trained by utilizing an offline database. We further apply probability alignment to guarantee the predicted probabilities of each MLA at the same confidence level. In the online phase, given a testing RSS sample of a user at an unknown location, we extract the labels with probabilities greater than a certain threshold from each MLA to construct the space of candidate labels (SCL). The size of SCL can be adaptively determined by using our proposed dynamic size determination algorithm. Based on the SCL, we propose a probabilistic model to intelligently estimate the user's location by evaluating the label credibility simultaneously. A high label credibility indicates that the frequently occurred label is more likely to be true. Experimental results in a real changing environment verify the superiority of SmartLoc, outperforming the best among comparative methods by 10.8% in 75th percentile accuracy.

A quickly growing location-based services area has led to increased demand for indoor positioning and localization. Undoubtedly, Wi-Fi fingerprint-based localization is one of the promising indoor localization techniques, yet the variation of received signal strength is a major problem for accurate localization. Magnetic field-based localization has emerged as a new player and proved a potential indoor localization technology. However, one of its major limitations is degradation in localization accuracy when various smartphones are used. The localization performance is different from various smartphones even with the same localization technique. This research leverages the use of a deep neural network-based ensemble classifier to perform indoor localization with heterogeneous devices. The chief aim is to devise an approach that can achieve a similar localization accuracy using various smartphones. Features extracted from magnetic data of Galaxy S8 are fed into neural networks (NNs) for training. The experiments are performed with Galaxy S8, LG G6, LG G7, and Galaxy A8 smartphones to investigate the impact of device dependence on localization accuracy. Results demonstrate that NNs can play a significant role in mitigating the impact of device heterogeneity and increasing indoor localization accuracy. The proposed approach is able to achieve a localization accuracy of 2.64 m at 50% on four different devices. The mean error is 2.23 m, 2.52 m, 2.59 m, and 2.78 m for Galaxy S8, LG G6, LG G7, and Galaxy A8, respectively. Experiments on a publicly available magnetic dataset of Sony Xperia M2 using the proposed approach show a mean error of 2.84 m with a standard deviation of 2.24 m, while the error at 50% is 2.33 m. Furthermore, the impact of devices on various attitudes on the localization accuracy is investigated.

As a widely established and accessible infrastructure, wireless local area networks (WLANs) have emerged as a viable option for indoor localization for both mobile and stationary users. However, WLANs present several challenges that must be fulfilled to achieve localization based on Wi-Fi signals and to obtain proper coverage prediction maps. This paper presents a study based on the application of extra-trees regression (ETR) for indoor localization using coverage prediction maps. The aim of the proposed method is to accurately estimate a user’s position within a radio environment map (REM) area using collected signal strength indicator (RSSI) values collected by a mobile robot. Our methodology consists of utilizing the RSSI collected values to construct the REM, which is then leveraged to create a dataset for indoor localization. This process involves tracking a user’s movements within a specific area of interest while considering a single access point. The proposed scheme explores various machine learning (ML) regression algorithms, with hyperparameter tuning carried out to optimize their performance through 10-fold cross-validation. To assess the REM, we employed metrics, such as the root mean square error, absolute error, and R-squared error. Additionally, we evaluated the indoor localization accuracy using location error metrics. Among the ML techniques assessed, our proposed ETR-based approach demonstrates the highest performance based on these error metrics. The combination of generating coverage maps and utilizing regression techniques for localization presents a potent approach for analyzing the radio frequency environment in indoor spaces.

In recent times, social and commercial interests in location-based services (LBS) are significantly increasing due to the rise in smart devices and technologies. The global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) have long been employed for LBS to navigate and determine accurate and reliable location information in outdoor environments. However, the GNSS signals are too weak to penetrate buildings and unable to provide reliable indoor LBS. Hence, GNSS’s incompetence in the indoor environment invites extensive research and development of an indoor positioning system (IPS). Various technologies and techniques have been studied for IPS development. This paper provides an overview of the available smartphone-based indoor localization solutions that rely on radio frequency technologies. As fingerprinting localization is mostly accepted for IPS development owing to its good localization accuracy, we discuss fingerprinting localization in detail. In particular, our analysis is more focused on practical IPS that are realized using a smartphone and Wi-Fi/Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) as a signal source. Furthermore, we elaborate on the challenges of practical IPS, the available solutions and comprehensive performance comparison, and present some future trends in IPS development.

At present, the theory and algorithm of wireless indoor positioning systems have been widely researched. Some applications of these systems have been successfully used such as inventory management. Nevertheless, positioning using radio signals indoor is subject to multipath propagation and other causes. Therefore, how to determine the location accurately has been recognized as a difficult task. This paper focuses on one of the positioning methods called received signal strength indication(RSSI) in a Wireless Local Area Network(WLAN). To improve the positioning accuracy, we proposed a scheme which to estimate the distance between access point(AP) and mobile station(MS) using the average of pilot signal strength in frequency domain. We then propose another scheme to estimate the position of the MS based on the estimated distances. At last, the simulations results show that the proposed schemes has a higher degree accuracy compared with the conventional methods.