Device-free passive localization from signal subspace eigenvectors

Abstract

Device-free passive (DFP) localization systems are a key solution for location-based services because they do not require any wireless device on a human body. Most of the existing DFP localization systems are based on the received signal strength (RSS) measurement only. However, the localization accuracy of RSS only-based systems is easily affected by the spatial and temporal variances of RSS due to multipath fading and noise, even in a static environment. In this paper, we propose a novel localization system for DFP using signal subspace eigenvectors from an antenna array. We present a fingerprinting technique using multiclass support vector machines (SVMs) based on a combination of array signal features with spatial and temporal averaging. We then evaluate the localization accuracy of our proposed system in different propagation environments: line-of-sight (LOS) and non-line-of-sight (NLOS). In addition, we analyze two types of receive antenna placement: centralized and distributed antennas. The experimental results show that the localization accuracy can be improved by the proposed system, particularly in the centralized antenna case. Moreover, they show that the proposed system can improve localization accuracy compared to the conventional RSS-only based system.