SmartFix: Indoor Locating Optimization Algorithm for Energy-Constrained Wearable Devices

Abstract EN

Indoor localization technology based on Wi-Fi has long been a hot research topic in the past decade.

Despite numerous solutions, new challenges have arisen along with the trend of smart home and wearable computing.

For example, power efficiency needs to be significantly improved for resource-constrained wearable devices, such as smart watch and wristband.

For a Wi-Fi-based locating system, most of the energy consumption can be attributed to real-time radio scan; however, simply reducing radio data collection will cause a serious loss of locating accuracy because of unstable Wi-Fi signals.

In this paper, we present SmartFix, an optimization algorithm for indoor locating based on Wi-Fi RSS.

SmartFix utilizes user motion features, extracts characteristic value from history trajectory, and corrects deviation caused by unstable Wi-Fi signals.

We implemented a prototype of SmartFix both on Moto 360 2nd-generation Smartwatch and on HTC One Smartphone.

We conducted experiments both in a large open area and in an office hall.

Experiment results demonstrate that average locating error is less than 2 meters for more than 80% cases, and energy consumption is only 30% of Wi-Fi fingerprinting method under the same experiment circumstances.