Impact of sniffer deployment on indoor localization

The demand for location based applications including network intrusion detection has grown tremendously lately. However, location determination of indoor mobile users is challenging because of the complexities of the indoor radio propagation characteristics. A radio-frequency (RF) based indoor localization system, like ARIADNE, typically operates by first constructing a lookup table mapping the radio signal strength at different known locations in the building, and then a mobile user's location at an arbitrary point in the building is determined by measuring the signal strength at the location in question and searching the corresponding location from the above lookup table. Usually, the mobile user's signal strength is measured by three or more sniffers mechanically deployed inside the building. Obviously, the sniffers position configuration and the number of available sniffers greatly affect the localization performance. This paper presents experimental results that explore the impact of the sniffers deployment on the localization based on the ARIADNE system. The results demonstrate that the triangular deployment and extra available sniffers generally generate better localization performance.