Building a Practical Global Indoor Positioning System

Abstract

A global indoor positioning system (GIPS) is a positioning system that provides positioning services in most buildings in villages and cities globally. Among the various wireless signals, the Wi-Fi signal has become one of the most feasible signals to realize GIPS because of its proliferation. This study introduces methods and tools to construct a GIPS by using Wi-Fi fingerprinting. An unsupervised learning-based radio map construction method is adopted to label locations of crowdsourced fingerprints, and a probabilistic indoor positioning algorithm is developed for the radio maps constructed with the crowdsourced fingerprints. Along with these techniques, collecting indoor and radio maps of buildings in villages and cities is essential for a GIPS. This study aims to collect indoor and radio maps from volunteers who are interested in deploying indoor positioning systems for their buildings. The methods and tools for the volunteers are also described in the process of developing an indoor positioning system within the larger GIPS. An experimental GIPS, named KAist Indoor LOcating System (KAILOS), was developed integrating the methods and tools. Then the COEX-mall indoor navigation system and KAIST campus indoor/outdoor integrated navigation system were developed on KAILOS, revealing the effectiveness of KAILOS in developing indoor positioning systems. The more volunteers who participate in developing indoor positioning systems on KAILOS-like systems, the sooner GIPS will be realized.