L/F-CIPS: Collaborative Indoor Positioning for Smartphones With Lateration and Fingerprinting

The demand for indoor location-based services (LBS) and the wide availability of mobile devices have triggered research into new positioning systems able to provide accurate indoor positions using smartphones. However, accurate solutions require a complex implementation and long-term maintenance of their infrastructure. Collaborative systems may help alleviate these drawbacks. In this article, we propose a smartphone-based collaborative architecture using neural networks and received signal strength (RSS), which exploits the built-in wireless communication technologies in smartphones and the collaboration between devices to improve the traditional positioning systems without additional deployment. Experiments are carried out in two real-world scenarios, demonstrating that our proposed architecture enhances the position accuracy of the traditional indoor positioning systems (IPSs).