Dictionary learning based fingerprinting for indoor localization

For wireless sensor networks, received signal strength (RSS) and proximity (also known as connectivity) measurements have been proposed as simple and inexpensive means to estimate range between devices and sensor location. While RSS measurements are recognized to suffer from errors due to the random nature of the fading channel, proximity measurements, ie., knowing only whether or not two devices are in communication range, are often discussed without considering that they are affected by the same fading channel. Proximity measurements are actually just a binary quantization of RSS measurements. We use the Cramér-Rao bound (CRB) to compare the minimal attainable variances of unbiased sensor location estimators for the cases of RSS and proximity measurements. For completeness, we also present the CRB for sensor localization with systems using K-level quantized RSS (QRSS) measurements, of which proximity measurements are the special case: K=2. Examples are presented for the case of one unknown-location sensor, and for the case of a 5 by 5 grid of sensors. These examples show that lower bounds for standard deviation in proximity-based systems are, as a rule of thumb, about 50% higher than the bounds for RSS-based systems. Furthermore, results are presented which show how many bits of quantization are necessary for a QRSS-based system to nearly achieve the bounds of an unquantized RSS system.

The paper focuses on the performance analysis of the timing acquisition scheme based on received signal strength (RSS) measurements for ultra-wideband (UWB) communication systems. To our knowledge, few paper discusses the performance of the timing acquisition scheme based on RSS measurements for UWB in details. The timing acquisition scheme based on RSS measurements has many advantages, such as low cost, high speed and robustness. However, low transmission power limitation and complicated indoor multipath propagation environments make it difficult to measure accurate RSS at the receiver and affect the accuracy of the time delay offset estimation for the local template signals. In addition, the time variation of the indoor channel state can form a multiple-to-one mapping relation between the RSS measurements and the distance, which largely limits the method application. In the paper, we analyze the accuracy of time delay offset estimation for this method by deriving the Cramer-Rao lower bound (CRLB). The number results show that the accuracy of the timing acquisition method based on RSS measurements suffers from both the UWB signal transmission speed and the varying distance between the transmitter and receiver. It is noted that though the accuracy of the method can hardly fulfil the fine timing acquisition requirement for UWB systems, it will largely reduce the coarse timing acquisition time and improve the performance for UWB timing acquisition systems if combined with other timing acquisition ones

A malicious attacker could, by taking control of internet-of-things devices, use them to capture received signal strength (RSS) measurements and perform surveillance on a person's vital signs, activities, and sound in their environment. This article considers an attacker who looks for subtle changes in the RSS in order to eavesdrop sound vibrations. The challenge to the adversary is that sound vibrations cause very low amplitude changes in RSS, and RSS is typically quantized with a significantly larger step size. This article contributes a lower bound on an attacker's monitoring performance as a function of the RSS step size and sampling frequency so that a designer can understand their relationship. Our bound considers the little-known and counter-intuitive fact that an adversary can improve their sinusoidal parameter estimates by making some devices transmit to add interference power into the RSS measurements. We demonstrate this capability experimentally. As we show, for typical transceivers, the RSS surveillance attacker can monitor sound vibrations with remarkable accuracy. New mitigation strategies will be required to prevent RSS surveillance attacks.

Fingerprint-based indoor localization methods rely on a database of Received Signal Strength (RSS) measurements and corresponding location labels. However, collecting and maintaining such a database can be costly and time consuming. In this work, we proposed Wasserstein Generative Adversarial Networks (WGAN) to generate synthetic data for fingerprinting-based indoor localization. The proposed system consists of a WGAN that is trained on a dataset of real RSS measurements and corresponding location labels. The generator of the WGAN learns to generate synthetic RSS measurements, and the critic learns to differentiate the generated and the real measurements. We validate the proposed system on a dataset of real RSS measurements. The result of the proposed system shows better localization accuracy as compared to using real data, while being more cost-effective and scalable.

As an emerging technique with a promising application prospect, the device-free localization (DFL) technique has drawn considerable attention due to its ability of realizing wireless localization without the need of equipping the target with any device. The DFL technique detects the shadowed links and realizes localization with the received signal strength (RSS) measurements of these links. However, one major disadvantage of the DFL technique is that the RSS signal is too sensitive, and a slight variation of the environment will cause the variation of RSS measurements, which incurs the misjudgment of shadowed links and degradation of localization performance. To solve this problem, a robust DFL scheme based on differential RSS is proposed. The scheme utilizes the novel differential RSS to judge whether a link is shadowed, which not only eliminates the need of acquiring reference RSS measurements but also overcomes the negative effect incurred by the environment. Meanwhile, an outlier detection scheme is presented to filter out the outlier links that are far away from the target. We present the observation model of the shadowed links and incorporate it into the particle filter framework to realize location estimation robustly. Experimental results demonstrate the outstanding performance of the proposed scheme.

With the proliferation of the Internet of Things (IoT), employing Received Signal Strength (RSS) as a metric to determine the location of a target (e.g., person or mobile device) is of great interest in terms of cost and ease of implementation. Indeed, RSS measurements can be easily obtained for most off-the-shelf devices, such as WiFi- or ZigBee compatible devices or sensors. This paper deals with the indoor localization problem in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) and proposes a new approach for radio signal propagation modelling and localization estimation, that accounts for the imperfection of RSS measurements and the reliability of RSS sources by using the Dempster-Shafer Theory (DST). In the signal propagation modelling, key information regarding the geometry of indoor environment that is divided into zones separated by walls (zoning), are considered. Based on the number of walls, the RSS irregularities are estimated using different distance intervals, which are weighted by a probability density determined experimentally. To estimate the location of a target node, the PCR6 rule is used to combine the belief masses of the positions obtained from the probability density. In order to evaluate the performance of the proposed approach, an experimental WSN has been deployed in a living apartment. The obtained results demonstrate that the proposed approach improves the localization accuracy compared to the case without zoning. Moreover, the obtained localization mean error proves the feasibility of a precise localization of humans in indoor environments in the case of Ambient Assisted Living and Social Robotics applications.

In this work we investigate position-based enhancements to indoor Wi-Fi network security. Specifically, we investigate whether received signal strength (RSS) measurements can identify attempts at network access by malicious nodes exterior to an authorized network perimeter. We assume the malicious nodes will spoof their received or transmitted power-levels in attempts to circumvent standard position-based security techniques. We outline why residual analysis of the RSS measurements cannot robustly identify illegal network access requests. However, we show that by referencing the residual RSS analysis to a "claimed position," interior to the authorized perimeter, a robust position-based verification system for secure network access can be developed.

This paper investigates the problem of estimating the location and velocity of a mobile agent using the received signal strength (RSS) measurements. Typical power measurements are inherently nonlinear and in this approach we derive a linear measurement scheme using an analytical measurement conversion technique which can readily be used with RSS measuring sensors. Power measurements are hence used in our robust version of a linear Kalman filter to estimate the dynamic parameters of the moving transmitter.

The location of mobile terminals in cellular networks is an important problem with applications in resource allocation, location sensitive browsing, and emergency communications. Finding cost effective location estimation techniques that are robust to non-line of sight (NLOS) propagation, quantization, and measurement noise is a key problem in this area. Quantized time difference of arrival (TDoA) and received signal strength (RSS) measurements can be made simultaneously by CDMA cellular networks at low cost. The different sources of errors for each measurement type cause RSS and TDoA measurements to contain independent information about mobile terminal location. This paper applies data fusion to combine the information of RSS and TDoA measurements to calculate a superior location estimate. Nonparametric estimation methods, that are robust to variations of measurement noise and quantization, are employed to calculate the location estimates. It is shown how the data fusion location estimators are robust, provide lower error than the estimators based on the individual measurements, and have low implementation cost.

Wireless intruder geolocation techniques using received signal strength (RSS) measurements from an array of sensors are very attractive for campus wireless network security because of their low cost implementation and simplicity. Both precision in RSS measurements and the relative geometry between RF sensors and the wireless intruder can affect the geolocation accuracy. This paper presents a comparative performance analysis of three RSS-based geolocation algorithms for non-cooperative wireless intruders in terms of their root mean square errors in wireless campus networks. A comparison study is established in a RF sensor grid and circular sensor geometries to fit general campus topology. Geolocation algorithm accuracy is examined for these particular geometric configurations of RF sensors with respect to various wireless intruder locations in and around a campus area. The results show that certain geolocation algorithms perform much better than others when wireless intruders are inside a campus wireless network, whereas the performance of the same geolocation algorithms is turned around when wireless intruders are outside a campus wireless network. As a result, a high accuracy solution to wireless intruder geolocation in campus wireless networks is discovered and proposed. MATLAB-based numerical simulations were used to evaluate the performance of these algorithms for various scenarios and parameters.

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.

Floor localization is at the heart of indoor positioning systems (IPSs) in multi-storey buildings with a variety of commercial, industrial, and health and safety applications. The prevalence of wireless technologies along with the integration of micro electro-mechanical sensors (e.g. barometers) in handheld devices and wearable gadgets of current vintage have prompted a surge in research and development efforts in the IPS area. Received signal strength (RSS), barometric altimetry (BA), and differential barometric altimetry (DBA) are three well-known methods of floor localization. However, the RSS-based methods lack the required accuracy, BA-based methods are prone to random errors due to local changes in the air pressure, e.g. from approaching weather systems, and DBA-based methods require installation of additional infrastructure (e.g. reference nodes and ad-hoc network for real-time information exchange). Fusion of BA and RSS is a viable solution for floor localization; nevertheless, available fusion algorithms are rather heuristic. In this dissertation, a theoretical framework is developed for fusing BA and Wi-Fi RSS measurements. The proposed framework involves a novel Monte Carlo Bayesian inference algorithm, for processing RSS measurements, and then fusion with BA using a Kalman Filter scheme. As demonstrated by our experimental results, the proposed sensor fusion algorithm achieves floor localization accuracy of 97% on average. The algorithm does not require new infrastructure, and has low computational complexity, hence, can be readily integrated into various state-of-the-art mobile devices.

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.

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.

Source localization using RSS (received signal strength) measurements has received considerable attention recently. However, there are few works focusing on the problem of positioning multiple directional sources. To provide a benchmark for evaluating localization algorithms, this paper derives the Cramer-Rao lower bounds (CRLB) for estimating locations, orientations, transmit powers, beam widths of multiple directional sources and the path loss exponent (PLE) of the environment. Meanwhile, in order to facilitate the computation and expression, we also present the relationship of the CRLB among different quantities of sources when estimating their locations and orientations. Given that the maximum likelihood (ML) estimator for the localization problem is highly non-convex and non-linear, this paper proposes an Expectation Maximization (EM) like algorithm to estimate the multiple parameters of each of the sources iteratively. Moreover, the complexity of the presented ML-EM algorithm is significantly reduced via linear representation among the parameters to be estimated. Numerical and simulation results demonstrate the performance of the proposed methods and the derived bounds in terms of estimation error, noise robustness and number of sources.