An improved convolutional neural network based indoor localization by using Jenks natural breaks algorithm

In this paper, we propose a surface correlation based fingerprinting method in sparse Wi-Fi environment. The proposed method can estimate location even with very few Wi-Fi APs by using accumulated spatial RSS pattern. We verify performance of the proposed method through several tests in a building with complex paths. Many studies have developed localization technologies that use measurements such as RSS (Received Signal Strength) or RTT (Round Trip Time) for Wi-Fi signal. All RF have signal noise and distortion problems as well as multipath problem in indoor environments. As the distance from the RF signal source increases, the discrimination of the RSS decreases due to RF signal noise and distortion. Therefore, ambiguity of RSS increases as the distance increases, the performance deteriorates. The conventional RF based localization method have tried to maintain dense RF environment to guarantee stable and accurate performance. However, in order to maintain the dense RF environment, it is becoming a barrier to commercialization of localization technology due to high cost of constructing RF infrastructure and maintenance difficulty. In this paper, we propose a Surface Correlation (SC) based fingerprinting technique to maintain high positioning performance even with few Wi-Fi APs. The surface is the accumulated RSS pattern data during the movement of a pedestrian, which means the spatial RSS pattern. Conventional fingerprinting methods using kNN (k-Nearest Neighbors) and WkNN (Weighted kNN) are very vulnerable to signal noise and distortion because they utilize instantaneous RSS data. The performance of Particle Filter (PF) based localization technology is also degraded in areas where Wi-Fi AP is sparsely distributed. However, the proposed method is very robust against signal noise and distortion because it compares the spatial RSS pattern with the reference RSS pattern on the fingerprinting database. This increases localization accuracy and availability for Wi-Fi coverage. For localization, the proposed method conduct correlation process for the spatial RSS pattern of a pedestrian with reference RSS pattern of database. So, the reference RSS pattern should be extracted from a reference trajectory that matches a pedestrian`s walking path. The proposed method utilize a database of ‘link-node’ structure to dynamically generate a reference trajectory in indoor environment with complicated path. It generate candidate reference trajectories using only MAC address and turn event of Pedestrian Dead-Reckoning (PDR). The proposed method fix a reference trajectory between these candidate trajectories through correlation process of measured RSS pattern with each reference RSS pattern. A reference point on the fixed reference having most similar RSS pattern to a pedestrian`s is considered as a current location. In order to improve performance at a fork where RSS ambiguity increases, the proposed method estimates preferentially for a reference trajectory matching with PDR turn event. The turn event can be wrong due to various motion of a pedestrian. The proposed method selects a correct reference trajectory by continuously performing correlation process on candidate reference trajectories. In order to verify the performance of the proposed surface correlation based fingerprinting method, we conducted several tests in a three-story building. Before the tests, we conducted a survey of Wi-Fi environment to construct fingerprinting database in the building. As a result of the survey, 170 APs are distributed in the building. We reduced the number of APs by 20% from 170 to 17, and analyzed performance of the proposed and conventional localization methods. The test results show that the performance of the conventional localization methods degrade as the number of applied APs decreases. The proposed fingerprinting method shows a 3 meter localization error even with very few Wi-Fi APs, and unlike the conventional fingerprinting method, the localization error is bounded to be within 5m due to the use of spatial RSS pattern. In this paper, we presented the fingerprinting method using the surface correlation in sparse Wi-Fi environment. The proposed fingerprinting method accumulates Wi-Fi RSS during movement of a pedestrian. The proposed method compares the spatial RSS pattern, which is accumulated RSS data, with reference RSS patterns of fingerprinting database. By comparing the RSS patterns, the proposed method greatly improves accuracy as well as stability. In addition, it can be effectively applied in a sparse Wi-Fi environment by improving the availability of ambiguous areas of Wi-Fi coverage. Through these results, we expect to be able to provide accurate and reliable location information even in indoor weak RF environment.

Wi-Fi-based indoor positioning systems are becoming increasingly prevalent in digital transitions; therefore, ensuring accurate and robust positioning is essential to supporting the growth in demand for smartphones’ location-based services. The indoor positioning system on a smartphone, which is generally based on Wi-Fi received signal strength (RSS) measurements or the fingerprinting comparison technique, uses the K-NN algorithm to estimate the position due to its high accuracy. The fingerprinting algorithm is popular due to its ease of implementation and its ability to produce the desired accuracy. However, in a practical environment, the Wi-Fi signal strength-based positioning system is highly influenced by external factors such as changes in the environment, human interventions, obstacles in the signal path, signal inconsistency, signal loss due to the barriers, the non-line of sight (NLOS) during signal propagation, and the high level of fluctuations in the RSS, which affects location accuracy. In this paper, we propose a method that combines pedestrian dead reckoning (PDR) and Wi-Fi fingerprinting to select a k-node to participate in the K-NN algorithm for fingerprinting-based IPSs. The selected K-node is used for the K-NN algorithm to improve the robustness and overall accuracy. The proposed hybrid method can overcome practical environmental issues and reduces the KNN algorithm’s complexity by selecting the nearest neighbors’ search space for comparison using the PDR position estimate as the reference position. Our approach provides a sustainable solution for indoor positioning systems, reducing energy consumption and improving the overall environmental impact. The proposed method has potential applications in various domains, such as smart buildings, healthcare, and retail. The proposed method outperforms the traditional KNN algorithm in our experimental condition since its average position error is less than 1.2 m, and provides better accuracy.

An RSS transform–based weighted k-nearest neighbor (WKNN) indoor positioning algorithm, Q-WKNN, is proposed to improve the positioning accuracy and real-time performance of Wi-Fi fingerprint–based indoor positioning. To smooth the RSS fluctuation difference caused by acquisition equipment, time, and environment changes, base Q is introduced in Q-WKNN to transform RSS to Q-based RSS, based on the relationship between the received signal strength (RSS) and physical distance. Analysis of the effective range of base Q indicates that Q-WKNN is more suitable for regions with noticeable environmental changes and fixed access points (APs). To reduce the positioning time, APs are selected to form a Q-WKNN similarity matrix. Adaptive K is applied to estimate the test point (TP) position. Commonly used indoor positioning algorithms are compared to Q-WKNN on Zenodo and underground parking databases. Results show that Q-WKNN has better positioning accuracy and real-time performance than WKNN, modified-WKNN (M-WKNN), Gaussian kernel (GK), and least squares-support vector machine (LS-SVM) algorithms.

With growing technology, Location Based Services (LBSs) are becoming a vital part of life. The rapid development of mobile internet has offered an opportunity for Wi-Fi indoor positioning to come under the spotlight due to its low cost. Here, indoor positioning is performed using Wi-Fi. The earlier solutions like GPS does not provide efficient positioning in indoor environment due to weak signal reception which makes Wi-Fi more reliable. However, nowadays the accuracy of the traditional indoor positioning algorithms like trilateration cannot meet the practical requirement. This paper proposes the performance analysis of indoor positioning algorithms using Wi-Fi technology based on Received Signal Strength (RSS) from the access points in the network. The positioning algorithms are based on location fingerprinting consisting of two stages: The offline database creation and the online positioning. The RSS values obtained by the mobile device at reference points are sent to the server where all the location fingerprints of all reference points are stored in a database. Coordinates of user position are calculated using positioning algorithms and the position is displayed in terms of 2Dcoordinates of the room and indoor map. Basic Fingerprint algorithm, RSS Fingerprint with minimum Euclidean Distance algorithm and RSS Fingerprint with Euclidean Distance and k-nearest neighbors' algorithm were implemented. Moreover comparison of their performance was carried out in terms of accuracy of position. From the result, it is found that an average accuracy of 0.4962 meters was achieved by RSS Fingerprint with minimum Euclidean distance algorithm.

With the rapid development of the mobile Internet, applications based on indoor localization have received increasing attention. In recent years, WiFi received signal strength (RSS) is widely used in indoor localization for the universally available WiFi infrastructure. However, the WiFi signal could easily be affected by non-line-of-sight and multipath propagation, which reduces the localization accuracy. In this paper, we propose an enhanced indoor localization system using multi-source measurements including WiFi RSS, ultra wideband (UWB) ranging, and inertial sensors to improve the performance. The multi-source measurements collected by users' smartphones are used for site survey in our system. To recover users' trajectories, we propose a crowdsourcing method to construct radio map. Moreover, a reference point clustering approach is used to improve system efficiency. A two-step localization method is proposed to locate a user. Experimental results show that the proposed system achieves better performance than only WiFi-based or UWB-based method.

Indoor localization schemes have significant potential for use in location-based services in areas such as smart factories, mixed reality, and indoor navigation. In particular, received signal strength (RSS)-based fingerprinting is used widely, given its simplicity and low hardware requirements. However, most studies tend to focus on estimating the 2D position of the target. Moreover, it is known that the fingerprinting scheme is computationally costly, and its positioning accuracy is readily affected by random fluctuations in the RSS values caused by fading and the multipath effect. We propose an indoor 3D localization scheme based on both fingerprinting and a 1D convolutional neural network (CNN). Instead of using the conventional fingerprint matching method, we transform the 3D positioning problem into a classification problem and use the 1D CNN model with the RSS time-series data from Bluetooth low-energy beacons for classification. By using the 1D CNN with the time-series data from multiple beacons, the inherent drawback of RSS-based fingerprinting, namely, its susceptibility to noise and randomness, is overcome, resulting in enhanced positioning accuracy. To evaluate the proposed scheme, we developed a 3D positioning system and performed comprehensive tests, whose results confirmed that the scheme significantly outperforms the conventional common spatial pattern classification algorithm.

This paper presents results for an approach for indoor location estimation that integrates received signal strength (RSS) data from both WiFi and GSM networks. Previous work has focused on relatively small indoor environments. In many potential applications, getting approximate location information, such as in which room the mobile user is, is adequate. A hierarchical clustering method is used to partition the RSS space. To choose the best transmitters in a partition, we assess the amount of RSS variance that is attributable to different base stations (BSs) or access points (APs) by transforming the RSS tuples into principal components (PCs). This allows us to retain most of the useful information of detectable transmitters in fewer dimensions. In our experiments, we collected WiFi and cellular RSS on the 2nd and 3rd-floor electronic engineering (EE) building in Queen Mary campus. The experiment results show that the proposed method can provide a good accuracy of room prediction, especially when we integrate WiFi RSS with GSM RSS together to do the positioning.

The fingerprint location method based on the WiFi received signal strength (RSS), is one of the indoor positioning method owning the highest value of application currently. It uses distribution characteristic of WiFi RSS in the space to estimate user's location. But due to the unstable RSS measurements of WiFi signal in a fixed location, in online phase, the uncertain fluctuation of RSS measurements will cause matching error of reference point (RP), and lead to the positioning error. To deal with this problem, a matching positioning method combining spatial multi-points fingerprint is presented in this paper. Firstly, assisted by odometer information, the space uniforming calibration of fingerprint is carried out in radial direction of road. And then, intensity and variation characteristics in space of consecutive multi-points RSS are matched jointly in online process, so as to enhance the positioning accuracy and stability. Through experiments, it is proved that the method in this paper is effective and, under reasonable parameters, positioning performance is good.

With the WiFi becoming more and more popular over the last few years, the study on the technology of indoor positioning based on WiFi is given more and more attention. Being specific to the problem that not all the clustered reference points(RPs) of the traditional clustering algorithm have geometric proximity in indoor positioning, this paper puts forward the affinity propagation presentation(AP) which bases on the combination of geometry and received signal strength (RSS). Being different from the traditional clustering algorithm, this kind of algorithm can endow the RPs with geometrical and endow the RSS with corresponding weight according to the positioning conditions, it can use the features of the geometry and RSS to restrain the sort of RPs, and that can make the sort of RPs more reasonable. After that it will use k-Nearest Neighbor Algorithm(KNN) to have accurate positioning, which not only can reduce the calculation, but also improve the localization accuracy. Simulation shows that, this kind of algorithm possesses the advantage of fast location and higher localization accuracy.

The increasing demand of indoor Location Based Services (LBS) has made Indoor Positioning System (IPS) a hot research topic. Recently, various machine learning techniques have been developed to tackle the problems of IPS. The WLAN fingerprinting technique is one of the most cost effective choices for IPS due to the use of existing Wi-Fi networks in commercial and public buildings. However, the variation of Received Signal Strength (RSS) at any specific location due to the indoor fading issue leads to serious challenges in the accuracy of the distance estimates. In this paper, we propose a new technique by using Probabilistic Neural Network (PNN) multi-classifier based on Multiple Service Set Identifiers (MSSIDs) that are configured on the same access point. A spatial voting scenario for three PNN-classifiers is proposed as a tool to determine the location of the user. Using a spatial voting based technique is specifically designed to tackle the negative impact of the multi-path propagation on the performance of IPS. The proposed system is performed inside the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences (CEAS) at Western Michigan University. The performance of the proposed system compared with some of the common methods such as K-Nearest Neighbors (K-NN) and multi-class support vector machine (SVM). According to the experimental results, the spatial voting of the three PNN-dassifiers can significantly mitigate the adverse effects of RSS variation. The performance of the multi-classifier exhibits superior performance to that of the other single classifiers in all Area of Interest (AOI). Over 3000 m2 AOI, the proposed system achieves localization accuracy < 0.73m and with precision 90 % of the distance error less than 2m.

With the increasing demand of indoor location-based services, such as tracking targets in a smart building, device-free localization technique has attracted great attentions because it can locate the targets without employing any attached devices. Due to the limited space and complexity of the indoor environment, there still exist challenges in terms of high localization accuracy and high efficiency for indoor localization. In this paper, for addressing such issues, we first convert the received signal strength (RSS) signals into image pixels. The localization problem is then formulated as an image classification problem. To well handle the variant RSS images, a deep convolutional neural network is then structured for classification. Finally, for validating the proposed scheme, two real testbeds are built in the indoor environments, including a living room and a corridor of an apartment. Experimental results show that the proposed scheme achieves good localization performance. For example, the localization accuracy can reach up to 100% in the scenario of living room and 97.6% in the corridor. Moreover, the proposed approach outperforms the methods of the K-nearest-neighbor and the support vector machines in both the noiseless and noisy environments.

Compared with the Wi-Fi Received Signal Strength (RSS) commonly-used for the indoor localization, the Channel State Information (CSI) can be used for precise ranging to achieve the high Wi-Fi indoor localization accuracy since it includes the fine-grained physical-layer information such as the amplitude and phase of each subcarrier during the signal transmission. Due to the lack of the theoretical analysis of the localization error bound in the existing CSI ranging-based localization methods, it is not easy to compare the ideal performance of different localization methods. Therefore, this paper proposes a CSI ranging-based Wi-Fi indoor localization error bound analysis method, which is based on the indoor signal propagation model to derive out the CSI ranging-based localization error bound by considering the relationship between the localization accuracy and the path loss, shadow fading, multipath effect and asynchronous effect. Besides, through the experimental comparison, this paper analyzes the difference between the actual localization error and the derived localization error bound, as well as discusses the impact of different experimental parameters on the localization performance.

LoRa technology has received a lot of attention in the last few years. Numerous success stories about using LoRa technology for the Internet of Things in various implementations. Several studies have found that the use of LoRa technology has the opportunity to be implemented in indoor-based applications. LoRa technology is found more stable and is more resilient to environmental changes. Environmental change of the indoor is a major problem to maintain accuracy in position prediction, especially in the use of Received Signal Strength (RSS) fingerprints as a reference database. The variety of approaches to solving accuracy problems continues to improve as the need for indoor localization applications increases. Deep learning approaches as a solution for the use of fingerprints in indoor localization have been carried out in several studies with various novelties offered. Let’s introduce a combination of the use of LoRa technology's excellence with a deep learning method that uses all variations of measurement results of RSS values at each position as a natural feature of the indoor condition as a fingerprint. All of these features are used for training in-deep learning methods. It is DeepFi-LoRaIn which illustrates a new technique for using the fingerprint data of the LoRa device's RSS device on indoor localization using deep learning methods. This method is used to find out how accurate the model produced by the training process is to predict the position in a dynamic environment. The scenario used to evaluate the model is by giving interference to the RSS value received at each anchor node. The model produced through training was found to have good accuracy in predicting the position even in conditions of interference with several anchor nodes. Based on the test results, DeepFi-LoRaIn Technique can be a solution to cope with changing environmental conditions in indoor localization

Indoor positioning systems based on received signal strength (RSS) achieve indoor positioning by leveraging the position-related features inherent in spatial RSS fingerprint images. Their positioning accuracy and robustness are directly influenced by the quality of fingerprint features. However, the inherent spatial low-resolution characteristic of spatial RSS fingerprint images makes it challenging to effectively extract subtle fingerprint features. To address this issue, this paper proposes an RSS-based indoor positioning method that combines enhanced spatial frequency fingerprint representation with fusion learning. First, bicubic interpolation is applied to improve image resolution and reveal finer spatial details. Then, a 2D fast Fourier transform (2D FFT) converts the enhanced spatial images into frequency domain representations to supplement spectral features. These spatial and frequency fingerprints are used as dual-modality inputs for a parallel convolutional neural network (CNN) model with efficient multi-scale attention (EMA) modules. The model extracts modality-specific features and fuses them to generate enriched representations. Each modality—spatial, frequency, and fused—is passed through a dedicated fully connected network to predict 3D coordinates. A coordinate optimization strategy is introduced to select the two most reliable outputs for each axis (x, y, z), and their average is used as the final estimate. Experiments on seven public datasets show that the proposed method significantly improves positioning accuracy, reducing the mean positioning error by up to 47.1% and root mean square error (RMSE) by up to 54.4% compared with traditional and advanced time–frequency methods.

Crowdsensing is more and more used nowadays for indoor localization based on Received Signal Strength (RSS) fingerprinting. It is a fast and efficient solution to maintain fingerprinting databases and to keep them up-to-date. There are however several challenges involved in crowdsensing RSS fingerprinting data, and these have been little investigated so far in the current literature. Our goal is to analyse the impact of various error sources in the crowdsensing process for the purpose of indoor localization. We rely our findings on a heavy measurement campaign involving 21 measurement devices and more than 6800 fingerprints. We show that crowdsensed databases are more robust to erroneous RSS reports than to malicious fingerprint position reports. We also evaluate the positioning accuracy achievable with crowdsensed databases in the absence of any available calibration.