WiFi Fingerprint Localization in Open Space

Abstract

In recent years, WiFi fingerprint-based localization has received much attention due to its deployment practicability. In this work, we investigate the impact of different indoor environmental factors on the performance of WiFi-fingerprinting. We find that, WiFi-fingerprinting highly depends on the deployed indoor environment. In an open space, it is quite challenging to find spatially varying but temporally stable signatures for adjacent reference locations. To address this issue, we propose a heatmap-based WiFi fingerprinting method (called HMF) by utilizing a period of history location estimations as an additional input to improve WiFi fingerprint localization in open space environment. Our experimental results show, HMF can improve existing WiFi fingerprinting schemes like Radar and Horus by 28% and 80% in moderately open space like wide corridor.