PowerLine positioning: A practical sub-room-level indoor location system for domestic use

Abstract

Using existing communications infrastructure, such as 802.11 and GSM, researchers have demonstrated effective indoor localization. Inspired by these previous approaches, and recognizing some limitations of relying on infrastructure users do not control, we present an indoor location system that uses an even more ubiquitous domestic infrastructure-the residential powerline. PowerLine Positioning (PLP) is an inexpensive technique that uses fingerprinting of multiple tones transmitted along the powerline to achieve subroom-level localization. We describe the basics behind PLP and demonstrate how it compares favorably to other fingerprinting techniques. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.