
19th Telecommunications forum TELFOR 2011 Serbia, Belgrade, November 22-24, 2011.
978-1-4577-1500-6/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE
Abstract — Recently, a lot of localization systems have
been studied. These systems are successfully used in many
real-world applications as inventory management, asset
tracking, location detection of products stored in a
warehouse, location detection of medical personnel, patients
or equipment in a hospital, and so on. For finding location of
an object, a system using Tag4M devices is proposed in this
paper. The localization is based on distance measurement
using received signal strength indicator. The distances
between the Wi-Fi tag and each access point are represented
as circles having the centre in the access point locations
which have known coordinates. The target’s position is given
by the point at the intersection of the circles.
Keywords — Indoor positioning, RSSI, Tag4M, Wi-Fi.
I. INTRODUCTION
NDOOR
localization systems have been actively
researched in recent years. These systems may detect
the location of an object in an automatically manner. There
are many real-world applications that depend on such
automation, like security issues, airports, universities or
education centers, inventory management, asset tracking,
guidance of tourists in large museums, location detection
of products stored in a warehouse, location detection of
medical personnel, patients or equipment in a hospital,
tracking the movement of firefighters inside burning
buildings, etc.
Localization is defined as the process of determining the
current position of an object or a person within a specific
area. The system which consists of a network of devices,
used to wirelessly locate required objects or people inside
a building are called indoor positioning system (IPS).
The most popular positioning system for finding the
location and the object’s position and for tracking users in
outdoor environments is the Global Positioning System
(GPS). Its worldwide satellite network is used to measure
the distance with a high accuracy. Due to the inability of
the satellite signals to penetrate walls, GPS is not suitable
All the authors have the same scientific contributions to this paper.
A. Dobîrcău is PhD student at the Faculty of Automation and
Computer Science, Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, Cluj, Romania
(phone:0040745367224; e-mail: ancuta.dobircau@aut.utcluj.ro
).
S. Folea is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Automation and
Computer Science, Technical University of Cluj-Napoca Cluj, Romania
(e-mail: silviu.folea@aut.utcluj.ro
).
D. Bordencea is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Automation and
Computer Science, Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, Cluj, Romania
(e-mail: daniela.bordencea@aut.utcluj.ro
).
H. Vălean is Professor at the Faculty of Automation and Computer
Science, Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, Cluj, Romania (e-mail:
honoriu.valean@aut.utcluj.ro
).
for indoor use.
By comparison with outdoor, indoor environments have
a higher complexity due to various obstacles like walls,
equipment, propagation of electromagnetic waves.
With the progress of the wireless technologies and
because wireless information access is now widely
available, localization techniques based on wireless
networks are effective for accurate positioning in indoor
and outdoor environments. In [1], the process of
determining a location using wireless technologies is
called location sensing, geo-location, position location or
radiolocation.
The most indoor positioning systems use radio,
ultrasound or infrared signals for finding the location with
higher precision where GPS signal cannot be used. Each of
these systems brings advantages and disadvantages. Some
of them are expensive to implement the technology and
have a high cost of production; others have a low cost of
production but they also have the disadvantage of getting
large errors during localization.
The following paragraphs will give a brief overview of
some localization technologies and systems.
II. S
URVEY OF INDOOR POSITIONING SYSTEMS
A solution for designing a wireless positioning system
is to develop a signaling system and a network
infrastructure of devices for measuring the location. This
solution has the advantage of controlling the physical
specification and also the quality of localization results.
Another solution is to use an existing network
infrastructure to locate a target, through which may be
avoided the infrastructure time-consuming deployment.
A positioning system based on infrared (IR) is one of
the most simple and common, due to the availability of IR
technology on various devices. The accuracy of this type
of system which uses infrared is about 5-10 m. Infrared-
based systems are composed of a receiver and a
transmitter that communicate using optical spectrum.
Several advantages of these systems are low cost
implementation and low power consumption and the
disadvantages are sensitivity to sunlight, high costs
installation and maintenance on a large-scale.
Among the first indoor positioning systems based on IR
technology is the Active Badge system [2] developed by
AT&T Cambridge in 1990s. Another system designed by
Cybernet System Corporation is Firefly [3]. This is an IR-
based motion tracking system. OPTOTRAK PROseries [4]
system is designed by Northern Digital Inc. for congested
shops and workplaces. Infrared Indoor Scour Local
Positioning System [5] is an example of an optical IR local
Indoor Localization System Based on Low
Power Wi-Fi Technology
A. Dobîrcău, S. Folea, H. Vălean, D. Bordencea
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