Energy-efficient WiFi scanning for localization

WiFi radio signals are commonly used for the localization of mobile devices. However, frequent scanning of WiFi reduces user experiences because it consumes significant energy on mobile devices. In this paper, we propose an energy-efficient WiFi scan system for localization. The proposed system preserves the quality of service of each application and minimizes the energy consumption of WiFi scanning. The main idea is that the system adaptively controls the dwell time of beacon-listening in given locations. We predict the number of scanned access points (APs) according to locations and optimize the dwell time of beacon-listening to obtain the minimum number of scanned APs. The evaluation shows that the proposed system saves the energy consumption of WiFi scans by 33.6% and 45.7%, according to the number of scanned APs, while not decreasing the accuracy of localization in indoor and outdoor scenarios.