Residual Neural Networks for Heterogeneous Smart Device Localization in IoT Networks

Location-based services assume significant importance in the Internet of Things (IoT) based systems. In the scenarios where the satellite signals are not available or weak, the Global Positioning System (GPS) accuracy degrades sharply. Therefore, opportunistic signals can be utilized for smart device localization. In this paper, we propose a smart device localization method using residual neural networks. The proposed network is generic and performs smart device localization using opportunistic signals such as Wireless Fidelity (Wi-Fi), geomagnetic, temperature, pressure, humidity, and light signals in the IoT network. Additionally, the proposed method addresses the two significant challenges in IoT based smart device localization, which are noise and device heterogeneity. The experiments are performed on three real datasets of different opportunistic signals. Results show that the proposed method is robust to noise, and a significant improvement in the localization accuracy is obtained as compared to the state-of-the-art localization methods.