Use of directional information in Wireless LAN based indoor positioning

Abstract

Wireless LAN (WLAN) positioning has received much attention recently and location fingerprinting has been widely accepted as an effect method. In WLAN positioning, the mobile user's (MU) orientation has a significant impact on the received signal strength from an access point. Many researchers have noticed this impact and considered it when the fingerprint database is generated. In this paper, directional information is used not only to increase the positioning accuracy, but also estimate the MU's orientation. A direction-based positioning fingerprinting technique is proposed. An experiment was carried out to verify the new approach. The results show the direction based approach can successfully localize the MU and estimate the MU's direction.