IBM Journal of Research and Development
IBM Skip to main content
  Home     Products & services     Support & downloads     My account  

  Select a country  
Journals Home  
  Systems Journal  
Journal of Research
and Development
  ·  Current Issue  
  ·  Recent Issues  
  ·  Papers in Progress  
  ·  Search/Index  
  ·  Orders  
  ·  Description  
  ·  Patents  
  ·  Recent publications  
  ·  Author's Guide  
  Staff  
  Contact Us  
  Related links:  
     IBM Research  

IBM Journal of Research and Development  
Volume 48, Number 5/6, Page 617 (2004)
IBM Research in Asia
  Full article: arrowHTML arrowPDF   arrowCopyright info





   

A wireless LAN-based indoor positioning technology

by Z. Xiang, S. Song, J. Chen, H. Wang, J. Huang, X. Gao
Context-aware computing is an emerging computing paradigm that can provide new or improved services by exploiting user context information. In this paper, we present a wireless-local-area-network-based (WLAN-based) indoor positioning technology. The wireless device deploys a position-determination model to gather location information from collected WLAN signals. A model-based signal distribution training scheme is proposed to trade off the accuracy of signal distribution and training workload. A tracking-assistant positioning algorithm is presented to employ knowledge of the area topology to assist the procedure of position determination. We have set up a positioning system at the IBM China Research Laboratory. Our experimental results indicate an accuracy of 2 m with a 90% probability for static devices and, for moving (walking) devices, an accuracy of 5 m with a 90% probability. Moreover, the complexity of the training procedure is greatly reduced compared with other positioning algorithms.
Related Subjects: Communications and communication networks; Data transmission; Information technology; Local area networks (LANs); Networks