FineLoc: A Fine-Grained Self-Calibrating Wireless Indoor Localization System

Self-calibrating wireless indoor localization systems construct the radio map even the indoor floor plan automatically, which avoids the labor-intensive site survey process; however, existing systems utilizing the feature of Wi-Fi signals can only provide coarse-grained indoor maps, which hinders improvement of localization accuracy. In this paper, we present FineLoc, a fine-grained self-calibrating localization system based on the freely-deployed Bluetooth low energy (BLE) nodes and crowd-sourced data, which can profile more detailed layout information of the indoor space. We first reveal that existing systems can only generate inaccurate floor plans owning to the coarse-grained Wi-Fi reference information. Then, we utilize the increasingly popular BLE beacon nodes as the source of reference information, with which a series of dead-reckoning optimization and new schemes particularly for finer-grained indoor map construction are presented. We implement a prototype FineLoc system, which is deployed in around 11,000 m
²
areas. Our experimental results with the prototype show that FineLoc can achieve 80 percent localization errors within 1.6 m, 1.4 m, and 1.1 m in the library, classroom building, and office building, respectively, with an average density of deployed BLE nodes less than 2.6/100 m
²
.