A Visual Location-Based System For Wireless LAN Management

Abstract

In this paper, a Location Based Services (LBS) system called WLoc (WLAN Location-Based Services Integrated System) in the campus wireless LAN is designed and implemented, and WebGIS technology is used to display the WLAN state. The management information for WLAN from wireless switches can be shown in campus electronic map, such as AP's location, working status, traffic statistics, and total number of users and so on. WLoc system also provides map based functions, including requesting the nearest network devices or other resources, navigation to any address, receiving alerts from WLAN network manager, and locating people on the map. In the wireless localization module of WLoc, some improvements are used in fingerprinting based localization algorithm. The experiments show that this method can decrease the errors of the localization results. Keywords-Location based service; Wireless LAN I. INTRODUCTION With the rapid development of Wireless technologies, Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) have become an important part of today's campus networks. However, end users typically do not enjoy the same level of service from WLANs that they have come to expect from wired networks. Better tools for managing WLANs are required for improving the reliability and the level of service provided by today's WLANs. Wireless networks are fundamentally different from wired networks, in that the behavior of the network is location- dependent. The Location-Based Service (LBS) under the WLAN environments has become a hot issue of scientific research. With the help of Geographic Information System (GIS), LBS, whose core function is wireless location technologies, provides users lots of location-based services such as information tracking, navigation and so on. Due to the nature of wireless signal propagation, in the mean time, the physical location of both the transmitter and the receiver may have large influence on the performance observed by end-users. We present an in-door wireless localization algorithm named i-KWNN based on the KWNN algorithm to solve the side effect of anonymous access points (AAP) in (1). To decrease the errors of the localization results, Kalman Filtering is adopted to enhance the tracking performance by smoothing signal strength. It is useful, on the other hand, to incorporate location information in WLAN management tools. What an administrator concerns about is whether the access point (AP) placement adequate for serving the locations from where the network is most actively used. With answers to this question, network administrators can take concrete steps to improve the reliability and performance of their networks. In this paper, we design a comprehensive system called WLoc (WLAN Location-Based Services Integrated System) in real large-scale WLAN environment with the chief aim to provide localization, navigation and management based on WLAN. An improved fingerprinting based localization algorithm is proposed, and we use this algorithm to implement the wireless localization module of WLoc. At the same time, in the paper, other related localization-based services modules and interfaces are also designed.