CSI-Based Indoor Localization
Kaishun Wu, Member, IEEE, Jiang Xiao, Student Member, IEEE,
Youwen Yi, Student Member, IEEE, Dihu Chen, Member, IEEE,
Xiaonan Luo, Member, IEEE, and Lionel M. Ni, Fellow, IEEE
Abstract—Indoor positioning systems have received increasing attention for supporting location-based services in indoor
environments. WiFi-based indoor localization has been attractive due to its open access and low cost properties. However, the
distance estimation based on received signal strength indicator (RSSI) is easily affected by the temporal and spatial variance due to
the multipath effect, which contributes to most of the estimation errors in current systems. In this work, we analyze this effect across
the physical layer and account for the undesirable RSSI readings being reported. We explore the frequency diversity of the subcarriers
in orthogonal frequency division multiplexing systems and propose a novel approach called FILA, which leverages the channel state
information (CSI) to build a propagation model and a fingerprinting system at the receiver. We implement the FILA system on
commercial 802.11 NICs, and then evaluate its performance in different typical indoor scenarios. The experimental results show that
the accuracy and latency of distance calculation can be significantly enhanced by using CSI. Moreover, FILA can significantly improve
the localization accuracy compared with the corresponding RSSI approach.
Index Terms—Indoor localization, channel state information, RSSI, physical layer
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1INTRODUCTION
L
OCALIZATION is one of the essential modules of many
mobile wireless applications. Although global position-
ing system (GPS) works extremely well for an open-air
localization, it does not perform effectively in indoor
environments du e to the disabilit y of GPS signals to
penetrate in-building materials. Therefore, precise indoor
localization is still a critical missing component and has
been gaining growing interest from a wide range of
applications, e.g., location detection of assets in a ware-
house, patient tracking inside the building of the hospital,
and emergency personnel positioning in a disaster area.
A great number of researches have been done to address
the indoor localization problem. Many range-based locali-
zation protocols compute positions based on received
signal strength indicator (RSSI), which represents the
received power level at the receiver. According to propaga-
tion loss model [1], received signal power monotonically
decreases with increasing distance from the source, which
is the foundation of the model-based localization. Most of
the existing radio frequency (RF)-based indoor localization
are based on the RSSI values [1], [2], [3], [4], [5]. More
related work is in the supplemental file, which can be found
on the Computer Society Digital Library at http://
doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/TPDS.2012.214. How-
ever, we claim that the fundamental reasons why RSSI is
not suitable for indoor localization are from two aspects:
First, RSSI is measured from the RF signal at a per packet
level, which is difficult to obtain an accurate value.
According to our measurement in a typical indoor environ-
ment as shown in Fig. 1, the variance of RSSIs collected
from an immobile receiver in 1 minute is up to 5 dB.
Second, RSSI is easily varied by the multipath effect. In
theory, it is possible to establish a model to estimate the
separation distance using the received power. In reality,
however, the propagation of a RF wave is attenuated by
reflection when it hits the surface of an obstacle. In addition
to the line-of-sight (LOS) signal, there are possibly multiple
signals arriving at the receiver through different paths. This
multipath effect is even more severe in indoor environ-
ments where a ceiling, floor, and walls are present. As a
result, it is possible for a closer receiver to have a lower
RSSI than a more distant one. Consequently, a simple
relationship between received power and separating dis-
tance cannot be established. Therefore, this time varying
and vulnerable RSSI value creates undesirable localization
errors.
We argue that a reliable metric provided by commercial
NICs to improve the accuracy of indoor localization is in
need. Such metric should be more temporal stable and
provide the capability to benefit from the multipath effect.
In current widely used orthogonal frequency division
multiplexing (OFDM) systems, where data are modulated
on multiple subcarriers in different frequencies and
transmitted simultaneously, we have a value that estimates
the channel in each subcarrier called channel state informa-
tion (CSI). Different from RSSI, CSI is a fine-grained value
from the PHY layer which describes the amplitude and
phase on each subcarrier in the frequency domain. In
contrast to having only one RSSI per packet, we can obtain
1300 IEEE TRANSACTION S ON PARALLEL AND DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS, VOL. 24, NO. 7, JULY 2013
. K. Wu is with the National Engineering Research Center of Digital Life,
State-Province Joint Laboratory of Digital Home Interactive Applications,
School of Information Science and Technology, Sun Yat-sen University,
Guangzhou 510006, China, and Guangzhou HKUST Fok Ying Tung
Research Institute. E-mail: kwinson@ust.hk.
. J. Xiao, Y. Yi, and L.M. Ni are with the Department of Computer Science
and Engineering, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong
Kong. E-mail: {jxiao, ywyi, ni}@cse.ust.hk.
. D. Chen is with the School of Physics and Engineering, Sun Yat-sen
University, Guangzhou, China. E-mail: stscdh@mail.sysu.edu.cn.
. X. Luo is with the National Engineering Research Center of Digital Life,
State-Province Joint Laboratory of Digital Home Interactive Applications,
Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China.
E-mail: lnslxn@mail.sysu.edu.cn.
Manuscript received 27 Dec. 2011; revised 19 June 2012; accepted 2 July 2012;
published online 11 July 2012.
Recommended for acceptance by J. Cao.
For information on obtaining reprints of this article, please send e-mail to:
tpds@computer.org, and reference IEEECS Log Number TPDS-2011-12-0937.
Digital Object Identifier no. 10.1109/TPDS.2012.214.
1045-9219/13/$31.00 ß 2013 IEEE Published by the IEEE Computer Society