EasyAPPos: Positioning Wi-Fi Access Points by Using a Mobile Phone

Wan Ting Shih, Chao Kai Wen*, Shang Ho Tsai, Ran Liu, Chau Yuen

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

4 Scopus citations

Abstract

Determining the location of Wi-Fi access points (APs) is vital for various Wi-Fi-based applications, such as localization, security, and AP deployment. Considerable effort has been exerted in the field of AP localization. In contrast to studies that require additional robots with specialized antenna arrays, we present EasyAPPos, a lightweight, always-on, and user-centered AP positioning solution that utilizes widely available mobile phones. We focus on addressing three challenges in AP positioning. First, the patch antenna on a mobile phone has a limited angular range due to its size, but our approach proposes a method for utilizing human natural rotation to enhance angular diversity. Second, our angle-based algorithm does not require synchronous clocks between the mobile device and the APs, in contrast to existing algorithms that require this synchrony to transform propagation delays into positions. Nevertheless, our algorithm can still utilize asynchronous delay information. Third, the low bandwidth of Wi-Fi beacon frames, which only provide limited capacity to counteract the effects of multipath, is addressed by performing AP positioning under challenging conditions. We validate EasyAPPos through simulations and experiments, which demonstrate its ability to achieve decimeter-level positioning accuracy even under harsh conditions.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)13385-13400
Number of pages16
JournalIEEE Internet of Things Journal
Volume10
Issue number15
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Aug 2023

Keywords

  • Channel state information (CSI)
  • Wi-Fi access points (APs) localization
  • simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM)

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