WiFi AP-RSS monitoring using sensor nodes toward anchor-free sensor localization

Sensor localization is one of the big problems when building large scale indoor sensor networks since GPS is unavailable in indoor environments. Many indoor localization systems have been proposed to tackle the sensor localization problem, yet user cooperation or many anchor nodes are required. In this paper, we propose a sensor localization system using WiFi APs as anchors. WiFi APs are largely installed in indoor environments and are managed by a network system manager. Using WiFi APs as anchors, we can localize sensor nodes without newly deployed anchor nodes. As a first step of our sensor localization system, this paper presents a WiFi AP-RSS monitoring system using sensor nodes. Sensor nodes are equipped with IEEE 802.15.4 (ZigBee) modules, which cannot demodulate WiFi (IEEE 802.11) signals. We therefore developed a cross-technology signal extraction scheme on sensor nodes. We herein describe the design and implementation of our AP-RSS monitoring system. The experimental evaluations show that our AP-RSS monitoring system successfully retrieves AP-RSS with an average error of 1.26 dB.