Combining Auto-Encoder with LSTM for WiFi-Based Fingerprint Positioning

Although indoor positioning has long been investigated by various means, its accuracy remains concern. Several recent studies have applied machine learning algorithms to explore wireless fidelity (WiFi)-based positioning. In this paper, we propose a novel deep learning model which concatenates an auto-encoder with a long short term memory (LSTM) network for the purpose of WiFi fingerprint positioning. We first employ an auto-encoder to extract representative latent codes of fingerprints. Such an extraction is proven to be more reliable than simply using a deep neural network to extract representative features since a latent code can be reverted back to its original input. Then, a sequence of latent codes are injected into an LSTM network to identify location. To assess the accuracy and effectiveness of our model, we perform extensive real-life experiments.