Wifigrams: Design of hierarchical Wi-Fi indoor localization systems guided by social network analysis

Abstract

This work introduces the notion of Wifigrams, i.e., visual Wi-Fi maps which comprise hundreds of topological positions (nodes) linked in accordance with their co-visibility degree of Wi-Fi Access Points (APs). Both design and analysis of Wifigrams are guided by the most popular Social Network Analysis (SNA) techniques. Thus, the structure of a hierarchical topology-based Wi-Fi indoor localization system emerges naturally when looking carefully to the related Wifigram. It shows graphically the closeness among topological positions in terms of their pattern of AP co-visiblity, yielding several zones of interest which are automatically discovered through community mining techniques. This novel proposal has been successfully tested in a large real-world environment, namely the first floor of the west wing in the Polytechnic School at the University of Alcalá (UAH), yielding encouraging results. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.