Tuning to your position: FM radio based indoor localization with spontaneous recalibration

Abstract

Position of mobile users has become highly important information in pervasive computing environments. Indoor localization systems based on Wi-Fi signal strength fingerprinting techniques are widely used in office buildings with existing Wi-Fi infrastructure. Our previous work has proposed a solution based on exploitation of FM signal to deal with environments not covered with Wi-Fi signal or environments with only single Wi-Fi access point. However, a general problem of indoor wireless positioning systems pertains to signal degradation due to the environmental factors affecting signal propagation. Therefore, in order to maintain a desirable level of localization accuracy, it becomes necessary to perform periodic calibration of the system, which is either time consuming or requires dedicated equipment and expert knowledge. In this paper, we present a comparison of FM versus Wi-Fi positioning systems and a combination of both systems, exploiting their strengths for indoors positioning. Finally, we address the problem of recalibration by introducing a novel concept of spontaneous recalibration and demonstrate it using the FM localization system.