Indoor location using fingerprinting and fuzzy logic

Abstract

Indoor location systems cannot rely on technologies such as GPS (Global Positioning System) to determine the position of a mobile terminal, because its signals are blocked by obstacles such as walls, ceilings, roofs, etc. In such environments the use of alternative techniques, such as the use of wireless networks, should be considered. The location estimation is made by measuring and analysing one of the parameters of the wireless signal, usually the received power. One of the techniques used to estimate the locations using wireless networks is fingerprinting. This technique comprises two phases: in the first phase data is collected from the scenario and stored in a database; the second phase consists in determining the location of the mobile node by comparing the data collected from the wireless transceiver with the data previously stored in the database. In this paper an approach for localisation using fingerprinting based on Fuzzy Logic and pattern searching is presented. The performance of the proposed approach is compared with the performance of classic methods, and it presents an improvement between 10.24% and 49.43%, depending on the mobile node and the Fuzzy Logic parameters. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.