A Testbed for Localizing Wireless LAN Devices Using Received Signal Strength

Abstract

This paper elaborates on the development of a wireless network testbed to measure the received signal strength indicator (RSSI) in different environments, as the first step for the application of fingerprinting-type localization algorithms of wireless LAN devices. Specifically, in the localization algorithm to the closest previously mapped sets of locations, the RSSI data collected first at known positions are then used to localize the mobile devices at random points. The localization algorithm tested is the minimum-distance algorithm in the RSSI feature space corresponding to the actual geographical points. This paper shows how the environment for RSSI measurement is built and what network configurations yield the most reliable measurements. In the first phase of building a testbed, configurations of off-the-shelf-equipment and the corresponding applications are explained. The second phase is to measure the RSSI in different propagation and physical environments. In this phase, different environments that have already been built in the first phase are examined. Firstly, RSSI is measured from access points' perspective. Secondly, RSSI measurements are taken from laptops' perspective. The third phase is to apply a localization algorithm using the collected data to verify the accuracy of the localization method and examine the characteristics of the collected data.