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Publications in Scientific Journals:

E. Mok, G. Retscher:
"Location Determination Using WiFi - Fingerprinting Versus WiFi - Trilateration";
Journal of Location Based Services, 1 (2007), 2; 145 - 159.



English abstract:
Many applications in the area of location-based services and personal navigation require nowadays the location determination of a user not only in outdoor environment but also indoor. Typical applications of Location-Based Services (LBS) mainly in outdoor environments are fleet management, travel aids, location identification, emergency services and vehicle navigation. LBS applications can be further extended if reliable and reasonably accurate three-dimensional positional information of a mobile device can be determined seamlessly in both indoor and outdoor environments. Current geolocation methods for LBS may be classified as GNSS-based, cellular network-based, or their combinations. GNSS-based methods rely very much on the satellite visibility and the receiver-satellite geometry. This can be very problematic in dense high rise urban environments and when transferring to indoor environment. Especially in cities with many high rise buildings, the urban canyon will affect very much the reception of the GNSS signals. Moreover, positioning in the indoor/outdoor transition areas would experience signal quality and signal reception problems, if GNSS alone systems are employed. The authors have proposed the integration of GNSS with wireless positioning techniques such as WiFi and UWB. In the case of WiFi positioning, the so-called fingerprinting method based on WiFi signal strength observations is usually employed. In this paper, the underlying technology is briefly reviewed, followed by an investigation of two WiFi positioning systems. Testing of the system is performed in two localization test beds, one at the Vienna University of Technology and another one at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. First test showed that the trajectory of a moving user could be obtained with a standard deviation of about  3 to 5 m. The main disadvantage of WiFi fingerprinting, however, is the required time consuming and costly signal strength system calibration in the beginning. Therefore the authors have investigated if the measured signal strength values can be converted to the corresponding range to the access point. A new approach for this conversion is presented and analysed in typical test scenarios.

Created from the Publication Database of the Vienna University of Technology.