Planning an indoor navigation service for a smartphone with Wi-Fi fingerprinting localization

Abstract

Navigation has become booming business recently. Well-known navigation services, such as TomTom, Garmin and Google Navigation, are dominating the market for outdoor, road based navigation. The fact that such applications are able to determine a location on a platform has always fascinated the author. Simple location determination is further utilized in specialized applications and functions, such as SportyPal, which logs the movements and interpolates several units, or the geotagging of photos. And so, this further piqued the interest to investigate matters in the indoor environment, as one has to look beyond what one sees. However, navigation as a word can also be used as a metaphor to describe one man’s life journey. How can one navigate as a human being? On the paths of life, one has to navigate through a web of complicated matters by fulfilling expectations and by making decisions that will influence your future. Decisions might be based on past experience and/or knowledge, there is no ‘turn back’ option, and things might heavily alter the path of life in unforeseen circumstances, both positive and negative. Navigation is then based on the abstract level. The author, too, almost navigated towards another direction. Unforeseen circumstances in the private life forced him to choose a different flow than intended. The result is this thesis project, in which much time and effort has been put. The author hopes that the thesis is readable and understandable. He hopes that every wise man should follow his own direction and that as such, navigation applications will contribute in making those decisions.