Effect of People around User to WLAN Indoor Positioning System Accuracy

Abstract

The ability to check the location of people or mobile devices (MD) in indoor environment has a large number of application. Indoor Positioning System (IPS) utilizes many existing technologies such as radio frequencies, magnetic fields, acoustic signals, thermal, optical or other sensors. WLAN IPS become one of the most favorite solutions because it is already widely exist and provide good accuracy. Fingerprint is one of the methods in WLAN IPS. The performance of this method is greatly affected by received signal strength indicator (RSSI). In fact RSSI value is very dynamic and influenced by environmental conditions inside the room such as walls, ceiling and also human presence. This paper presented an experiment to explore the effect of many people around MD to the RSSI and position error of IPS. People around MD at certain distance and position will be barrier for WLAN signal, therefore the RSSI will decrease. The average of position error because of that effect is 11.34 meter.