WiFi-Based Indoor Positioning and Communication: Empirical Model and Theoretical Analysis

GPS (Global Positioning System) has been developed more mature and perfect in outdoor positioning. However, because GPS signals cannot be effectively transmitted in a complex indoor environment, positioning and navigation cannot be performed in typical situations such as indoor emergency occurrence location determination, shopping mall guides, and intelligent service robot fixed-point services. With the deepening of related researches, technologies based on ultrasound, WiFi, Bluetooth, radio frequency identification, infrared, etc. have been used to achieve indoor target positioning. The traditional WiFi-based indoor positioning technology uses the RSS value and CSI value of the WiFi signal to build a fingerprint database for positioning. The algorithm is complex and highly cost, and the function is relatively single. In this paper, for the first time, we propose a new algorithm for integrating indoor target positioning and communication based on WiFi signals. Using RSS value of WiFi signal for target location and using CSI value for indoor wireless channel modeling to get the system transmission function to achieve communication purpose, the experimental results show that the positioning algorithm can achieve positioning within the ideal accuracy range, and the communication algorithm part can accurately recover the system function of the wireless multipath channel and finally achieve the goal of integration of positioning and communication based on the WiFi signal level.