H. Schmitzberger: Autonomous WLAN Sensors for Ad Hoc Indoor Localization, 13th International Conference on Computer Aided Systems Theory, EUROCAST 2011 - Mobile Computing Platforms and Technologies Workshop, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain, February 6-11, 2011.
Autonomous WLAN Senors for Ad Hoc Indoor Localization In mobile computing scenarios, many localization approaches have been investigated primarily on the basis of radio or sound sensor technologies. In the context of indoor localization, wireless LAN technology has proven feasible for a broad variety of localization setups with satisfactory performance and accuracy figures, not least because of its widespread availability on both infrastructure and client side. While most research concentrates on the client-based approach where the mobile device acts as sensor, this work on the contrary emphasizes infrastructure-based localization completely relying on a sensing network and shifting the computation load away from the mobile device towards a background localization infrastructure. Our main contribution is a self-contained, portable sensor network that provides indoor localization detached from stationary constraints such as an underlying backbone network or a back-end server system. We present a prototype system that realizes an ad hoc setup demanding low deployment effort and able to provide a fundament for context-aware application scenarios. We conclude this paper by highlighting the autonomy aspects of our system and discuss the issues still to solve towards an out-of-the-box localization network for indoor usage.