Indoor Location Determination using Radio Signal Strength Model for Distance Estimation

The Radio Signal Strength (RSS) at receiver is indicative of the distance between the sender and the receiver. However, this technique of distance calculation is not necessarily very accurate since the transmission medium properties do not obey temporal uniformity. Thus RSS based calculations are only an approximation of the distance. This paper explains how the indoor location of a wireless device can be determined, given RSS measurements from minimum three different access points whose locations are accurately known. The devised approach is based on practical data collected (RSS vs. Distance) for a chosen building and the approach shall work for any other premise after practical dataset is prepared. During the experimentation, the devised approach was modelled, implemented in software and tested with the collected data of RSS vs. distance for various access points.