A hybrid indoor positioning system based on Wi-Fi hotspot and Wi-Fi fixed nodes

Due to the development of the communication networks and mobile computing, location based service (LBS) becomes very popular in recent years. The Global Positioning Systems (GPS) are the earliest widely used modern systems for outdoor positioning service. However, GPS due to lack of LoS(Line Of Sight) cannot provide good accuracy in indoor environments since the satellite signals are blocked by building obstructions. It is expected that in the near future, indoor positioning will gain more demand as people spend more than 70% of their lives in indoor environment. The indoor environments are very difficult to track due to that a large variety of technologies have been proposed for coping with them. From the available technologies, WiFi technology can best suit to provide indoor positioning service because most of the commercial infrastructure is well equipped with Wi-Fi routers. However the trilateration method fails in providing high accurate positioning due to the multipath effect generated from wireless signal in an indoor environment. The proposed system uses Fingerprinting method which is based on the RSS (Receive Signal Strength) value received from the Wi-Fi router. The system also facilitates the location of people where there is no wireless local area network (WLAN) infrastructure deployed