An efficient wireless access point selection algorithm for location determination based on RSSI interval overlap degree determination

Optimally choosing wireless Access Points (APs) as urban areas become more densely packed with them becomes increasingly challenging. In WiFi-based Indoor Positioning Systems (IPS), Selecting Wireless Access Point (AP), namely, WiFi routers, is significant as the more APs that are selected, the higher the computation, energy and time cost. This is unsuitable for networking low-resource devices as part of an Internet of Things. In addition, selecting the optimum number of APs not only reduces redundant information but also improves the positioning accuracy. In this paper, we present a novel AP selection method that uses the RSSI Interval Overlap Degree (IOD) to discriminate between known location Reference Points. We validated our algorithm in an office-like indoor space at a Queen Mary computer science lab. The results show that our algorithm has an improved performance, which is 13.6%, 18.2%, and 7.6% better than IG (information gain), MI (mutual information), SD (standard deviation) used as baseline algorithms, respectively.