Access point placement for fingerprint-based localization

Fingerprint-based localization systems mainly utilize the received signal strength (RSS) to estimate the location of a receiver, and the localization accuracy depends largely on the number and placement of access points (APs). In this paper, we propose a novel method for placing the APs, which aims to minimize the total number of similar fingerprints (SFs) over the entire array of training locations. Minimizing SFs will increase the diversity of RSS array and hence improve localization accuracy. To solve the problem using a simple brute force search would be highly computationally expensive and inefficient. Instead, we propose a heuristic optimization algorithm based on Simulated Annealing (SA). Numerical results are obtained for both the brute force search and the SA based approach. Finally, the proposed algorithm's outputs, i.e., the APs' locations, are used with a K-Nearest Neighbors based localization algorithm, and the resulting localization errors are analyzed.