Android Based Wireless Positioning System

Abstract

This paper is about a positioning system known as Wi-Fi Positioning System or Wireless Positioning System (WPS). As the name suggests the wireless positioning system is developed on the concept of triangulation that uses the nearby Wi-Fi access point to detect the position. These access points can cover a large area when planted strategically in such a way that every position in the area could access at least three access points. The RSSI triangulation formula can then be used to calculate distance between the smartphone and the access points. This distance is known as received signal strength indication (RSSI) number. This number is then stored along with physical location name in the database to act as fingerprint of the location. To detect the indoor position, the smart phone location is compared with the fingerprints stored in the database. The physical name corresponding to the matched fingerprint is then displayed as the name of the physical location. In the study an android application is developed that uses WPS technology to work as an indoor positioning system.