A Wi-Fi-based Indoor Positioning System for Smartphones

Abstract

When smartphones have become more popular, many people start using mobile navigation applications on smartphones. In addition, most of smartphone devices are equipped with GPS sensors and GPS positioning technology, thus most of mobile navigation applications have location-aware features that they can provide location positioning functions. People can make use of these mobile navigation applications to obtain their location information conveniently and then find the shortest route to arrive a destination. However, these mobile navigation applications may be limited by the GPS positioning technologies that they only can provide good positioning in an outdoor open environment. In other words, these navigation applications cannot provide accurate location information inside building or an area with a lot of tall building. When people want to locate their position inside building, they will not be successful. Therefore, if a mobile navigation application can provide a good positioning function for an indoor environment, the limitation of GPS positioning service can be solved. Then everyone can obtain their location information easily and no matter they are inside a building or walking outside. The objective of this project is to build up an indoor positioning system (Y5Way) that can provide an indoor positioning service on smartphones. The main concept is that Y5Way will utilize the Wi-Fi-based positioning technology to determine the real-time location of user mobile devices. And Y5Way will be developed to provide the at least room-level accuracy positioning service. This project also will utilize smartphone sensors to design different methods to improve the positioning effect. In this project, a positioning system backend server and a location-aware application designed for Android smartphones are developed in Y5Way. The backend server provides several major functionalities that include estimate user location in an indoor environment, provide map and route information and manage the system. It will connect with the system to provide an indoor positioning function and several basic navigation functions. Also, the mobile navigation application can be used to construct the radio maps for Y5Way.