High accuracy indoor localization: A WiFi-based approach

Indoor positioning systems (IPS) based on Wi-Fi signals are gaining popularity recently. IPS based on Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) could only achieve a precision of several meters due to the strong temporal and spatial variation of indoor environment. On the other hand, IPS based on Channel State Information (CSI) drive the precision into the sub-meter regime with several access points (AP). However, the performance degrades with fewer APs mainly due to the limit of bandwidth. In this paper, we propose a Wi-Fi-based time-reversal indoor positioning system (WiFi-TRIPS) using the location-specific fingerprints generated by CSIs with a total bandwidth of 1 GHz. WiFi-TRIPS consists of an offline phase and an online phase. In the offline phase, CSIs are collected in different 10 MHz bands from each location-of-interest and the timing and frequency synchronization errors are compensated. We perform a bandwidth concatenation to combine CSIs in different bands into a single fingerprint of 1 GHz. In the online phase, we evaluate the time-reversal resonating strength using the fingerprint from an unknown location and those in the database for location estimation. Extensive experiment results demonstrate a perfect 5cm precision in an 20cm × 70cm area in a non-line-of-sight office environment with one link measurement.