Linux-based measuring platform for time-based location observables in IEEE 802.11 networks

Abstract

Positioning has been a hot topic in research for several years. GPS is accepted as a global solution for positioning outdoors, but indoor positioning still remains an open issue. Time-based multilateration techniques are presented as a good trade-off between performance and complexity for indoor positioning. Although several proposals for time-based multilateration has been presented, only some of them has been really implemented and of them, only few can be reproduced by other researchers (mainly due to hardware customization). This work presents a system for measuring time-based location observables in IEEE 802.11 networks. This measuring system has been implemented in Linux, so it can be deployed easily by any researcher. The current implementation supports the measurement of two kind of observables: round trip times (for two-way time-of-arrival techniques) and passive TDOAs (for the passive TDOA location technique). First experiments, presented in this paper, are focused on demonstrating the feasibility of the system for measuring these two location observables.