2013 IEEE 24th International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications: Fundamentals and PHY Track

Regional Propagation Model Based Fingerprinting

Localization in Indoor Environments
Genming Ding* , Zhenhui Tan* , Jinbao Zhang and Lingwen Zhang*
*

Institute of Broadband Wireless Mobile Communications, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing 100044, China
State Key Laboratory of Rail Trafc Control and Safety, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing 100044, China

EMC Laboratory, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing 100044, China

Email: dinggenming@gmail.com,{zhhtan, jbzhang, zhanglw}bjtu.edu.cn

AbstractIn this paper, we present a novel indoor propagation

model for use in a wireless LAN (WLAN) based ngerprinting
localization system. This model is based on a derivation of the
free space propagation model taking into account the penetration
loss and geographic propagation factors in different regions of
the indoor structure. The objective of the model is to reconstruct
the collected sparse ngerprinting database, eliminating the
workload in the ofine data collection phase. In the online phase,
weighted K-nearest neighbor (WKNN) is adopted to obtain the nal location estimation. We have carried out various experiments
in a real-world setup to show the performance improvement of
the proposed algorithm. Results show that proposed propagation
model obtains more accurate prediction of the received signal
strength values than other traditional models, delivering a high
localization accuracy of up to 1.4 meter.

I. I NTRODUCTION
In recent years, the increasing demands of location based
services have promoted the development of indoor positioning
techniques. Some applications and services, such as navigation
and advertising in large-scale shopping mall, require high
precision and real-time localization performance to send the
location related information to the end-users. The traditional
localization method is triangulation, which estimates the distances by measuring the received signal strength (RSS), time
of arrival (TOA) and time difference of arrival (TDOA) of
indoor wireless LAN (WLAN) signals transmitted by the
access points (AP) and received at the mobile terminals or
vice versa. However, the accuracy of triangulation is affected
by factors including non-line-of-sight propagation, multipath
effect and specic site parameters (e.g. indoor layout, moving
objects).
One of the preferable location algorithms for indoor environments is the RSS based ngerprinting algorithm [1]. The
method falls into two phases, the ofine phase and the online
phase. In the former phase, a ngerprinting map (FM) is generated by collecting a set of RSS values from various APs at
the predened reference points (RPs). In the second phase, the
location estimation of the terminal is carried out by matching
online measurements with the closest ngerprints in the FM.
The current matching algorithms in ngerprinting localization
include K-nearest neighbor (KNN), weighted KNN (WKNN)
[2], kernel based method [3], support vector machines (SVM)
[4], and articial neural networks (ANN) [5]. As shown in the
literatures [25], ngerprinting localization could obtain mean

978-1-4577-1348-4/13/$31.00 2013 IEEE

location accuracy of up to 3-5 meters, which is much higher

than those achievable in the traditional triangulation methods.
However, the ngerprinting localization algorithm also suffers from some drawbacks. One is that it has a rather high
computational complexity and requires a large memory, which
affect the real-time performance of the system. To solve this
problem, clustering and AP selection methods are adopted
in the literatures. The authors in [5, 6] proposed an afnity
propagation method to realize the real-time localization system. In addition, Laoudias et al. [7] discovered that using a
clustering method to divide the whole region into several subregions could effectively reduce computational complexity and
memory requirements. AP selection methods including Fisher
criterion method [3], strongest APs method [8], and InfoGain
method [9] not only overcome such drawback but also improve
the location accuracy.
Another disadvantage of the ngerprinting approach is that
it needs extensive efforts to build the FM in the ofine phase,
which limits its exible application, especially in large-scale
indoor environments. Feng et al. [6] proposed compressive
sensing based method to reduce the ofine efforts. They rst
built a sparse FM (SFM) in the ofine phase, and then use
compressive sensing to reconstruct the whole FM to estimate
the location information of the terminals. In order to recover
the signal from the compressive measurements, the sensing
matrix was chosen to be a realization of Gaussian white
noise, or a sequence of Bernoulli random variables taking
values 1 with equal probability [10]. However, it is difcult to
realize such a matrix physically. Several other studies [11, 12]
proposed using traditional propagation models to predict the
missing ngerprints in the whole FM, whereas the prediction
accuracy of the propagation model will play an important role
in the location accuracy.
In this paper, we propose a new practical and efcient
propagation model, called regional propagation model (RPM),
that takes into account the indoor layout, penetration loss and
additional attenuation loss caused by geographic propagation
factors to carry out the ngerprints prediction. Then, the reconstructed FM (RFM) is utilized to match the online ngerprint
to estimate the nal location of the terminal. Our experiments,
performed in a real WLAN environment, demonstrate that
the prediction error between the measurements and predicted
path loss of the model in this paper are much less than other

291

Fig. 1.

Testing scenarios.

traditional models. Furthermore, we achieve higher location

accuracy when adopting the proposed propagation model.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section II
describes the ofine training process and several path-loss
models. Section III introduces the online terminal location
estimation algorithm in detail. Experiments and analysis are
presented in Section VI. Finally, the concluding remarks and
future work are provided in Section V.
II. O FFLINE TRAINING AND RSS P REDICTION M ODEL
A. Sparse Fingerprints Map
The traditional ngerprinting localization method is divided
into two phases, the ofine training phase and the online
localization estimation phase. During the ofine phase, a set
of RSS values are collected at the predened reference points
(RPs) li (xi , yi ), shown as black dots in Fig. 1, from M
available APs which are marked as AP1 , AP2 , etc. The
APs have known positions on the map, denoted as A =
{a1 , a2 , ..., aM }, respectively. The ngerprint values collected
at the RP li canbe dened as ri = [vi,1 , vi,2 , ..., vi,M ]T ,
t
where vi,j = 1t =1 vi,j ( ), and vi,j ( ) denotes the RSS
value collected at li and time from APj , t is the sampling period. Then, the sparse FM (SFM) can be expressed
as Rs = [r1 , r2 , ..., rLs ], Ls is the total number of black
dots in Fig. 1. The uncollected ngerprints at certain RPs,
represented by the white dots in Fig.1, will be predicted by
the propagation models. We dene those predicted ngerprints
as pi = [vi,1 , v i,2 , ..., v i,M ]T , i = 1, 2, ..., Lp , where v i,j is the
predicted RSS value of the path-loss model of APj , and Lp
is the total number of the white dots. Then the whole RFM
can be dened as
R = [Rs Rp ]
(1)
where Rp = [p1 , p2 , ..., pLp ].
B. RSS Prediction Models
In order to obtain high localization accuracy, the predicted
ngerprints should be as close to the real propagation loss as
possible, which means that we need an accurate propagation
model to reconstruct the whole FM.
In the literature [13], the typical propagation models fall
into two classes: deterministic models and empirical models.
The models in the rst class, which achieve more accurate
prediction of RSS, require more computation to simulate the
propagation of the radio signals. The empirical models are

relatively easy to compute and simple to design. However,

the prediction accuracy might be so low that it will result in
a signicant decrease in localization performance. According
to these observations, we mainly study three well-known
empirical models and propose a novel regional propagation
model to predict the ngerprints.
(1) One-slope Model (OSM)
The OSM [14] is the most commonly used path-loss model.
This model indicates that mean path loss increases exponentially with distance d (m) between the two transceivers:
P L(d)|dB = P L(d0 ) + 10n log(d/d0 )

(2)

where P L(d0 ) is the free space propagation loss at reference

distance d0 (typically assumed to be 1 m), and n is the pathloss exponent.
(2) Dual-slope Model (DSM)
The DSM [15] utilizes two slopes to reect different increasing speeds of path-loss in the distance less or more than
a break point. The basic DSM is dened as

P L(d0 ) + 10n1 log(d/d0 ) d dbp
P L(d)|dB =
(3)
P L(dbp ) + 10n2 log(d/dbp ) d > dbp
where dbp = 4ht hr is the break point, where ht is the
transmitter antenna height, hr is the receiver antenna height,
and is the center frequency wavelength (2.4GHz in this
case).
(3) COST231 Multi Wall Model (COST231-MWM)
The COST231-MWM [16] considers not only the free
space loss but also the penetration parameters such as wall
attenuation factor (WAF) and oor attenuation factor (FAF).
The model can be described as
P L(d)|dB = P L(d0 ) + 10n log(d/d0 ) + W AF + F AF (4)
 Kw
Kf
where W AF =
i=1 kf i Lf i ,
i=1 kwi Lwi , F AF =
Kw /Kf is the number of wall / oor types, kwi /kf i is the
number of penetrated walls / oors of type i, and Lwi /Lf i is
the attenuation due to the walls / oors of type i.
(4) Regional Propagation Model (RPM)
Although COST231WMW takes into account the penetration attenuation factors and can perform well in certain
conditions, the model does not include the environment dependence factors such as the distance dependence of path-loss
exponent, reection, diffraction and multipath effects [11, 17].
At this point, we propose a novel indoor propagation model,

292

Measured RSS Distribution

which we call RPM, mainly based on the observation that the

receivers in neighboring locations suffer from the similar radio
propagation environments. Thus, RPM rst manually divides
the whole indoor area into several sub-regions according to the
AP location and the indoor topography. We adopt site-specic
analysis method proposed by Hassan-Ali [18] to partition the
whole area into several rectangular areas. As shown in Fig. 1,
the whole testing area is divided into 8 sub-regions described
by different colors according to the location of AP1 and the
oor plan. Then the propagation model of one of sub-regions
is dened as
P L(d)|dB = P L(d0 ) + 10ni log(d/d0 ) + P Lpi + P Lgi
d i , i = 1, 2, ...,

35
4

wi

w i li

20

25

30

35

40

45

50
55
60

65

70

75
5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

(a) Measurement and RPM Prediction Results

Predicted RSS Distribution (OSM)
25

30

35
4

(8)

i=1

1
where wi = +d(
r,ri ) ,  = 0.01 is a small real constant used
to avoid division by zero, and the value of k is 4 in our tests.

IV. P ERFORMANCE E VALUATION

A. Experimental setup
To validate the proposed propagation model and further
to evaluate the localization performance, we carry out our
experiments in a WLAN environment at 2.4GHz in the
corridor of the eighth oor of Siyuan building at Beijing

40

45
5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

Predicted RSS Distribution (COST231MWM)

50
55

60

65

70
75

2
5

(6)

Finally, we estimate the terminal location through a

weighted linear equation of the k different RP locations. The
equation is dened as

i=1

15

(5)

The ne location estimation is obtained through the WKNN

algorithm. We choose k different RPs with the least Euclidian
distance d(r, ri ) between the corresponding ngerprints ri
(i = {1, 2, ..., k} {RP1 , RP2 , ..., RPLs +Lp }, ri R) and
the online ngerprint. The Euclidian distance can be calculated
as follows
d(r, ri ) = r ri 
(7)

k


10

Predicted RSS Distribution (RPM)

In the online stage, the terminal rst collects the online

ngerprint r = [vl,1 , vl,2 , ..., vl,M ]T at an unknown location l,
then carries out a strongest AP selection method to choose m
APs, where m M , with strongest mean RSS values in the
online collected ngerprint. Providing that APi is one of the
m selected APs, the AP selection can be formulated as the
j th -row of the selection matrix mM , denoted as an 1 M
vector j , j {1, 2, ..., m} with all elements equal to zero
except j (i) = 1, i {1, 2, ..., M }, namely

45
5

III. O NLINE L OCALIZATION E STIMATION

l =  1
k

40

where ni is the path-loss exponent in i sub-region i ,

is the number of sub-regions, P Lpi = W AF + F AF
is the penetration loss, and P Lgi , which is experimentally
determined in our tests, is the additional attenuation loss due
to the geographic propagation factors including reection,
diffraction, and multipath effects.

j {1, 2, ..., m}

30

th

j = [0, ..., 0, 1, 0, ..., 0]

25

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

(b) OSM and COST231MWM Predication Results

Fig. 2. The measured and predicted results of RSS values from AP1 when
sparse degree is S3.

Jiaotong University. As shown in Fig. 1, the surveillance area

is separated into Ls + Lp = 126 distinct RPs with the size of
each grid 1.2m 1.2m.We use a Lenovo G430-TSI laptop as
the mobile terminal to record t = 30 samples for each RPs
from available APs. The number of APs detected in the testing
area is between 10 and 28, including other APs from upper
oors or downstairs. If one of the APs is undetectable at the
specic RP, a default value (-100dBm in our case) is set to
handle the missing value in the corresponding ngerprint.
B. Experimental results
First, we conduct two sets of experiments to evaluate the
path-loss prediction accuracy of the proposed model in the
ofine phase. The parameters of the models described in
section II are estimated by measuring the real RSS in the
specic RPs, such as the black dots shown in Fig. 1. We
dene three kinds of sampling sparse degrees according to the

293

minimum grid size of 4 nearest black dots: S1 = 2.4m1.2m,

S2 = 3.6m 1.2m, S3 = 4.8m 1.2m.
Fig. 2 shows the results of the measured and predicted RSS
distribution of AP1 . The result, shown in the upper subplot of
Fig. 2(a), is based on the actual measurement at the whole 126
RPs over the experimental area, while the results of the other
three subplots in Fig. 2 are generated by using RPM, OSM
and COST231MWM, respectively, when the sparse degree is
S3. Obviously, the proposed RPM outperforms others that the
RSS distribution of RPM is most similar to the actual collected
values.
1

online location estimation adopts the same WKNN algorithm

as described in section III. Fig. 4 shows the cumulative
error distribution of different algorithms including the algorithm using SFM and the algorithms using RFM based on
the propagation models such as RPM (RFM-RPM), OSM
(RFM-OSM), DSM (RFM-DSM) and COST231MWM (RFMCOST231MWM) when m = 12 and sparse degree is S3. The
results indicate that RFM-RPM outperforms other four algorithms. This is because the RPM could predict the ngerprints
more accurate than other propagation models. In fact, the
location accuracy of RFM-RPM within 2m is 76.2% whereas
those of RFM-OSM, RFM-DSM, RFM-COST231MWM and
SFM are 64.3%, 63.5%, 67.8% and 66.6%, respectively.

0.9
1
RPM
OSM
DSM
COST231MWM

0.7
0.6

0.9

0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0

Fig. 3.
S3.

10
RSS Prediction Error (dB)

15

RFMRPM(S1)
RFMRPM(S2)
RFMRPM(S3)
SFM(S1)
SFM(S2)
SFM(S3)

0.8
Prob.error < Abscissa

Prob.error < Abscissa

0.8

0.7
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2

20

0.1
0

CDF plots of path-loss prediction accuracy when sparse degree is

Fig. 3 shows the cumulative distribution function (CDF) of

the prediction error of RSS values from all detectable APs
when the sparse degree is S3. As indicated in Fig. 3, RPM
achieves the highest prediction accuracy of RSS in the real
indoor WLAN environments. Actually, the estimation error of
RPM within 10dB is 96.2%, while those of OSM, DSM and
COST231MWM are 72.2%, 69.8% and75.2%, respectively.
1
0.9

Fig. 5.

4
6
Location Estimation Error (m)

10

Effects of sparse degree on the location accuracy when m = 6.

Fig. 5 shows the cumulative localization error for the cases

sparse degrees being S1, S2 and S3 when the selected number
of APs is m = 6. We can observe that RFM-RPM obtains
higher accuracy than SFM. However, the performance of
the proposed algorithm decreases when the sparse degree
increases. It is because that the parameters estimation of
propagation model would not match well with the real radio
environments when the sampling data decreases, in other
words, the ngerprints prediction accuracy will decrease.

0.7
3

0.6
0.5

2.8

0.4

2.6

0.3

RFMRPM(S3)
RFMOSM(S3)
RFMDSM(S3)
RFMCOST231MWM(S3)
SFM(S3)

0.2
0.1
0

Mean Location Eerror (m)

Prob.error < Abscissa

0.8

3
4
5
Location Estimation Error(m)

RFMRPM (S3)
RFMOSM (S3)
RFMDSM (S3)
RFMCOST231MWM (S3)
SFM (S3)

2.4
2.2
2
1.8

Fig. 4. CDF plots of location estimation errors when m = 12 and sparse

degree is S3.

Furthermore, another three sets of experiments are carried

out to validate the efciency of proposed path-loss model
used in the localization system. In all of the experiments, the

1.6
1.4

7
8
9
Access Point Number

10

11

12

Fig. 6. Effects of the number of selected APs on the mean location error
when sparse degree is S3.

294

Fig. 6 demonstrates the average location errors versus the

number of selected APs when the sparse degree is S3. It
shows that localization accuracy increases with the number of
selected APs, and the proposed algorithm achieves the highest
location accuracy especially when m > 5. As a result, the
mean location accuracy of the proposed algorithm can reach
up to 1.4m which is 25.1%, 21.7%, 18.6% and 20.0% less
than that of RFM-OSM, RFM-DSM, RFM-COST231MWM
and SFM, respectively, when 12 APs are used.
V. C ONCLUSION AND F UTURE W ORK
In this paper, we have proposed a novel RPM path-loss
model for indoor environments, and then utilized the model in
the ngerprinting localization system to reconstruct the whole
ngerprints database from sparse samples. The experimental
results demonstrated that our propagation model can evaluate
the RSS values more accurately than other existing pathloss models. We also veried that the proposed method can
reduce signicantly the ofine efforts of collecting samples,
while achieving acceptable localization accuracy. However, it
should be pointed out that we currently divided the indoor
layout into several sub-regions through manual work rather
than theoretical analysis. Hence, in the future work, we will
concentrate on the study of automatic clustering techniques
to further improve the propagation model and localization
performance.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors would like to thank the nancial support
provided by the National Natural Science Foundation of China
(Grant no.61071075, and no.61101237). The work of G. Ding
was supported in part by the Fundamental Research Funds for
the Central Universities (Grant no. 2012YJS022). The authors
would like to thank for the helpful comments from Dr. W. Yin
of CAAM Department, Rice University, USA, and M. Zhang
of Fujitsu R&D center, Co., Ltd, China.

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