Shivang Aggarwal
ABSTRACT
WiFi's fine time measurement (FTM) based ranging protocol has set the stage for mass adoption of location-aware applications and services in WiFi-pervading enterprise and consumer ecosystems. However, the lack of deployment of such commercial-scale localization solutions has motivated us to conduct a comprehensive experimental study that aims to verify whether WiFi's FTM is indeed ready for prime-time localization.
With heterogeneity in operation (devices, environments, and spectrum) being the fundamental essence of commercial deployments, our study focuses on FTM's ability to deliver useable localization under such practical conditions. Being a first of its kind, our study reveals several interesting insights for practical operation of FTM, with the most critical of them being its inability to eliminate substantial offsets in estimated ranges between heterogeneous devices and configurations that degrade performance significantly (up to 20 m error). Albeit a negative result for FTM's readiness, we also propose a simple but promising remedy - an over-the-top auto-calibration solution that allows every WiFi device, when it enters an enterprise environment, to self-calibrate its offsets on-demand, thereby salvaging FTM to render it useful (median error of 2 m) for localization.
- [Online]. Android Developer Guide. https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/connectivity/wifi-rttGoogle Scholar
- [Online]. Android WiFi RTT API. https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/connectivity/wifi-rttGoogle Scholar
- [Online]. ASUS RT-ACRH13 Router. https://www.asus.com/supportonly/RT-ACRH13/HelpDesk/Google Scholar
- [Online]. Compulab fitlet2. https://fit-iot.com/web/products/fitlet2/Google Scholar
- [Online]. FTM patch for the Linux iw utility. https://goo.gl/TzJRGGGoogle Scholar
- [Online]. Google Nest WiFi. https://store.google.com/us/product/nest_wifi?hl=en-USGoogle Scholar
- [Online]. Google Pixel 5. https://www.gsmarena.com/google_pixel_5-10386.phpGoogle Scholar
- [Online]. IEEE Standard for Information Technology - 802.11-2020. https://standards.ieee.org/ieee/802.11/5536/Google Scholar
- [Online]. Linksys Velop Intelligent Mesh WiFi System. https://www.linksys.com/us/whole-home-mesh-wifi/velop-intelligent-mesh-wifi-system-tri-band-ac2200/p/p-whw0301/Google Scholar
- [Online]. Wi-Fi access points support the IEEE 802.11mc FTM RTT. https://people.csail.mit.edu/bkph/ftmrtt_issuesGoogle Scholar
- [Online]. Wi-Fi Aware Android API. https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/connectivity/wifi-awareGoogle Scholar
- [Online]. Xiaomi Mi Note 10. https://www.mi.com/global/mi-note-10/Google Scholar
- Martin Azizyan, Ionut Constandache, and Romit Roy Choudhury. 2009. SurroundSense: Mobile Phone Localization via Ambience Fingerprinting. In Proc. of ACM MobiCom.Google ScholarDigital Library
- P. Bahl and V.N. Padmanabhan. 2000. RADAR: an in-building RF-based user location and tracking system. In Proc. of IEEE INFOCOM.Google Scholar
- Leor Banin, Ofer Bar-Shalom, Nir Dvorecki, and Yuval Amizur. 2019. Scalable Wi-Fi Client Self-Positioning Using Cooperative FTM-Sensors. IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement (2019).Google ScholarCross Ref
- Daniel Camps-Mur, Eduard Garcia-Villegas, Elena Lopez-Aguilera, Paulo Loureiro, Paul Lambert, and Ali Raissinia. 2015. Enabling always on service discovery: Wifi neighbor awareness networking. IEEE Wireless Communications (2015).Google Scholar
- Yifeng Cao, Ashutosh Dhekne, and Mostafa Ammar. 2021. ITrackU: Tracking a Pen-like Instrument via UWB-IMU Fusion. In Proc. of ACM MobiSys.Google ScholarDigital Library
- Changhao Chen, Stefano Rosa, Yishu Miao, Chris Xiaoxuan Lu, Wei Wu, Andrew Markham, and Niki Trigoni. 2019. Selective Sensor Fusion for Neural Visual-Inertial Odometry. In Proc. of IEEE/CVF CVPR.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Dongyao Chen, Kang G. Shin, Yurong Jiang, and Kyu-Han Kim. 2017. Locating and Tracking BLE Beacons with Smartphones. In Proc. of ACM CoNEXT.Google ScholarDigital Library
- Krishna Chintalapudi, Anand Padmanabha Iyer, and Venkata N. Padmanabhan. 2010. Indoor Localization without the Pain. In Proc. of ACM MobiCom.Google Scholar
- Ashutosh Dhekne, Ayon Chakraborty, Karthikeyan Sundaresan, and Sampath Rangarajan. 2019. TrackIO: Tracking First Responders Inside-Out. In Proc. of USENIX NSDI.Google Scholar
- Zakieh S. Hashemifar, Charuvahan Adhivarahan, Anand Balakrishnan, and Karthik Dantu. 2019. Augmenting Visual SLAM with Wi-Fi Sensing for Indoor Applications. Auton. Robots (2019).Google Scholar
- Mohamed Ibrahim, Hansi Liu, Minitha Jawahar, Viet Nguyen, Marco Gruteser, Richard Howard, Bo Yu, and Fan Bai. 2018. Verification: Accuracy Evaluation of WiFi Fine Time Measurements on an Open Platform. In Proc. of ACM MobiCom.Google ScholarDigital Library
- Mohamed Ibrahim, Ali Rostami, Bo Yu, Hansi Liu, Minitha Jawahar, Viet Nguyen, Marco Gruteser, Fan Bai, and Richard Howard. 2020. Wi-Go: Accurate and Scalable Vehicle Positioning Using WiFi Fine Timing Measurement. In Proc. of ACM MobiSys.Google ScholarDigital Library
- Manikanta Kotaru, Kiran Joshi, Dinesh Bharadia, and Sachin Katti. 2015. SpotFi: Decimeter Level Localization Using WiFi. In Proc. of ACM SIGCOMM.Google ScholarDigital Library
- Hongbo Liu, Yu Gan, Jie Yang, Simon Sidhom, Yan Wang, Yingying Chen, and Fan Ye. 2012. Push the Limit of WiFi Based Localization for Smartphones. In Proc. of ACM MobiCom.Google ScholarDigital Library
- Rajalakshmi Nandakumar, Krishna Kant Chintalapudi, and Venkata N. Padmanabhan. 2012. Centaur: Locating Devices in an Office Environment. In Proc. of ACM MobiCom.Google Scholar
- Daniel Neuhold, Christian Bettstetter, and Andreas F. Molisch. 2019. HiPR: High-Precision UWB Ranging for Sensor Networks. In Proc. of ACM MSWiM.Google Scholar
- Pat Pannuto, Benjamin Kempke, Li-Xuan Chuo, David Blaauw, and Prabal Dutta. 2018. Harmonium: Ultra Wideband Pulse Generation with Bandstitched Recovery for Fast, Accurate, and Robust Indoor Localization. ACM Trans. Sen. Netw. (2018).Google ScholarDigital Library
- Anshul Rai, Krishna Kant Chintalapudi, Venkata N. Padmanabhan, and Rijurekha Sen. 2012. Zee: Zero-Effort Crowdsourcing for Indoor Localization. In Proc. of ACM MobiCom.Google ScholarDigital Library
- Maurizio Rea, Domenico Giustiniano, and Joerg Widmer. 2020. Virtual Inertial Sensors with Fine Time Measurements. In 2020 IEEE 17th International Conference on Mobile Ad Hoc and Sensor Systems (MASS).Google Scholar
- Souvik Sen, Božidar Radunovic, Romit Roy Choudhury, and Tom Minka. 2012. You Are Facing the Mona Lisa: Spot Localization Using PHY Layer Information. In Proc. of ACM MobiSys.Google ScholarDigital Library
- Wenhua Shao, Haiyong Luo, Fang Zhao, Hui Tian, Shuo Yan, and Antonino Crivello. 2020. Accurate Indoor Positioning Using Temporal-Spatial Constraints Based on Wi-Fi Fine Time Measurements. IEEE Internet of Things Journal (2020).Google ScholarCross Ref
- Deepak Vasisht, Swarun Kumar, and Dina Katabi. 2016. Decimeter-Level Localization with a Single WiFi Access Point. In Proc. of USENIX NSDI.Google ScholarDigital Library
- He Wang, Souvik Sen, Ahmed Elgohary, Moustafa Farid, Moustafa Youssef, and Romit Roy Choudhury. 2012. No Need to War-Drive: Unsupervised Indoor Localization. In Proc. of MobiSys 2012.Google ScholarDigital Library
- Jie Xiong and Kyle Jamieson. 2013. ArrayTrack: A Fine-Grained Indoor Location System. In Proc. of USENIX NSDI.Google ScholarDigital Library
- Yuan Zhuang, Jun Yang, You Li, Longning Qi, and Naser El-Sheimy. 2016. Smartphone-Based Indoor Localization with Bluetooth Low Energy Beacons. Sensors (2016).Google Scholar
Index Terms
- Is wifi 802.11mc fine time measurement ready for prime-time localization?
Recommendations
Accurate indoor positioning using IEEE 802.11mc round trip time
AbstractWiFi time of flight (ToF) measurement has been supported recently by the wireless LAN protocols to improve WiFi localization. Specifically, the IEEE 802.11-2016 standard has a fine-time measurement (FTM) protocol that can be used to ...
A Real-Time Indoor WiFi Localization System Utilizing Smart Antennas
In this paper, we study issues associated with the implementation of a real-time WiFi localization system for an indoor environment. This system utilizes smart antennas to receive signal strength from a mobile target (access point) and send the signal ...
Avoiding multipath to revive inbuilding WiFi localization
MobiSys '13: Proceeding of the 11th annual international conference on Mobile systems, applications, and servicesDespite of several years of innovative research, indoor localization is still not mainstream. Existing techniques either employ cumbersome fingerprinting, or rely upon the deployment of additional infrastructure. Towards a solution that is easier to ...
Comments