Modeling of indoor positioning systems based on location fingerprinting

In previous years, positioning systems for indoor areas using the existing wireless local area network infrastructure have been suggested. Such systems make use of location fingerprinting rather than time or direction of arrival techniques for determining the location of mobile stations. While experimental results related to such positioning systems have been presented, there is a lack of analytical models that can be used as a framework for designing and deploying the positioning systems. In this paper, we present an analytical model for analyzing such positioning systems. We develop the framework for analyzing a simple positioning system that employs the Euclidean distance between a sample signal vector and the location fingerprints of an area stored in a database. We analyze the effect of the number of access points that are visible and radio propagation parameters on the performance of the positioning system and provide some preliminary guidelines on its design.