In-house localization for Wi-Fi coverage diagnostics

Abstract

Telecommunication operators and Internet Service Providers often face the problem of having residential customers complaining about deficient Wi-Fi coverage inside their houses and/or about the low quality of service while accessing the Internet. Addressing these complaints properly involves a comprehensive in-house diagnostic of the technical deployment, the use of specialized equipment and visits by qualified personnel. An alternative is to involve the users in a preliminary diagnostic, by leveraging the potential of current smartphones, aiming to identify possible causes for the complaints that can be solved remotely or through simple procedures to be executed by the customers. A key feature of such a diagnostic procedure is the ability to estimate the location of the smartphone indoors automatically. This paper proposes a simple indoor localization solution, based on Wi-Fi fingerprinting, that can be integrated into one such diagnostics procedure. The proposed solution was impleme nted and tested in real-world houses by emulating the behaviour of non-qualified users. The obtained results show that Wi-Fi fingerprinting, when used in such an uncontrolled environment, still poses some challenges as its precision is still significantly low.