Online Learning-Based WIFI Radio Map Updating Considering High-Dynamic Environmental Factors

Indoor localization has been recognized as a promising research around the world, and fingerprint-based localization method which leverages WIFI Received Signal Strength (RSS) has been extensively studied since widespread deployment of Access Points (APs) makes WIFI signals omnipresent and easily be obtained. A primary weakness of WIFI-based fingerprinting localization approach lies in its vulnerability under environmental changes and alteration of AP deployment. Despite some studies focus on dealing with effects of AP alterations and low-dynamic environmental factors, such as humidity, temperature, etc., influences of high-dynamic factors, such as changes of crowds’ density and position, on WIFI radio map have not been sufficiently studied. In this work, we propose OWUH, an Online Learning-based WIFI Radio Map Updating service considering influences of high-dynamic factors. OWUH utilizes sensors in smart phones as the source of RSS datasets, and it combines historical and newly collected RSS data and purposeful probe data as dataset to incrementally update radio map, which means, compared with traditional methods, the OWUH approach requires a smaller number of RSS data for frequent updating of radio map. Moreover, in order to further enlarge our dataset, we take static data and low-dynamic data into account. An improved online learning method is proposed to recognize periodic pattern and update current radio map. Extensive experiments with 15 volunteers across 10 days indicate that OWUH effectively accommodates RSS variations over time and derives accurate prediction of fresh radio map with mean errors of less than 5dB, outperforming existing approaches.