Uniwide WiFi Based Positioning System

Millions of people travel between countries and regions on a daily basis being exposed to unfamiliar environments. Knowing where you are and how to get to places within a restricted time can make people's lives easier. Today, WiFi access points (APs) are common everywhere, especially on university campuses, in hotels, hospitals, shopping centres, and city central business districts. This project, dubbed WiPos (WiFi-Positioning), had the objective to develop a positioning system using WiFi APs deployed across a university to locate one's position in a building under conditions where GPS could not be used. When relatively accurate user position is available, location based services (LBS) can be provided to users, including timetable of a lecture room, location of the nearest vending machine, and so on. This project involved developing a server and a client (running on the Android platform) to handle positioning and LBS transactions. Testing has shown that the university's WiFi network is sufficient to provide 'room to room' accuracy.