Autonomous smartphone-based WiFi positioning system by using access points localization and crowdsourcing

The survey of WiFi access points (APs) locations and their propagation parameters (PPs) is a time and labour consuming process, which makes WiFi positioning impractical. In this paper, a novel crowdsourcing method is introduced. The proposed method is used for automatic AP localization and PPs estimation by employing an inertial navigation solution, such as Trusted Portable Navigator (T-PN). The proposed system runs on smartphones, from which it builds and updates the database autonomously and adaptively to account for the dynamic environment. A WiFi positioning method, based on the generated database, is also discussed. The proposed system is validated by both simulated and experimental tests.