SDR-Fi-Z: A Wireless Local Area Network-Fingerprinting-Based Indoor Positioning Method for E911 Vertical Accuracy...

The Enhanced 911 (E911) mandate of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) drives the evolution of indoor three-dimensional (3D) location/positioning services for emergency calls. Many indoor localization systems exploit location-dependent wireless signaling signatures, often called fingerprints, and machine learning techniques for position estimation. In particular, received signal strength indicators (RSSIs) and Channel State Information (CSI) in Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs or Wi-Fi) have gained popularity and have been addressed in the literature. While RSSI signatures are easy to collect, the fluctuation of wireless signals resulting from environmental uncertainties leads to considerable variations in RSSIs, which poses a challenge to accurate localization on a single floor, not to mention multi-floor or even three-dimensional (3D) indoor localization. Considering recent E911 mandate attention to vertical location accuracy, this study aimed to investigate CSI from Wi-Fi signals to produce baseline Z-axis location data, which has not been thoroughly addressed. To that end, we utilized CSI measurements and two representative machine learning methods, an artificial neural network (ANN) and convolutional neural network (CNN), to estimate both 3D and vertical-axis positioning feasibility to achieve E911 accuracy compliance.