An indoors wireless positioning system based on wireless local area network infrastructure

With the increasing use of mobile computing devices such as Personal Digital Assistants (PDA), and an expansion of Wireless Local Area Networks (WLAN), there is growing interest in an indoor Wireless Positioning Systems (WPS) based on WLAN infrastructure. This paper describes a WPS that uses the signal strength of WLAN transmissions from/to WLAN Access Points to determine the position of the mobile user. To some extent, this technique addresses a shortcoming of GPS positioning systems, which are ideal outdoors but which are generally not available indoors. In this paper, the authors describe the configuration of WPS. Experiments and a discussion of the accuracy are presented. The results of the experiments shows that a wireless access point-based indoor positioning system is feasible and a positioning accuracy of 1-3m can be achieved while an accuracy of 0.1m-level can be obtained under an idealised situation.