GreenLoc: An energy efficient architecture for WiFi-based indoor localization on mobile phones

Abstract

With the ubiquity of WiFi-enabled smartphones, and large-scale access point deployment, WiFi-based localization is one of the most promising indoor localization systems. Existing WiFi localization solutions, however, exhibit high power demand due to the periodic updates required, which raises the barrier for deployment on mobile devices since battery life is a crucial resource. In this paper, we present an energy efficient architecture, GreenLoc, that leverages the numerous sensors existing on mobile devices, along with typical group mobility patterns, in order to lower the average energy cost for indoor localization. We also propose a cluster-based localization algorithm, integrate it with our GreenLoc architecture, and evaluate its performance via simulation and prototype implementation. Our results show up to 60% reduction in average energy consumed with a small penalty in accuracy that does not impact the performance of the range of applications we target.