Received signal strength indicator and its analysis in a typical WLAN system (short paper)

Received signal strength based fingerprinting approaches have been widely exploited for localization. The received signal strength (RSS) plays a very crucial role in determining the nature and characteristics of location fingerprints stored in a radio-map. The received signal strength is a function of distance between the transmitter and receiving device, which varies due to various in-path interferences. A detailed analysis of factors affecting the received signal for indoor localization is presented in this paper. The paper discusses the effect of factors such as spatial, temporal, environmental, hardware and human presence on the received signal strength through extensive measurements in a typical IEEE 802.11b/g/n network. It also presents the statistical analysis of the measured data that defines the reliability of RSS-based location fingerprints for indoor localization.