Indoor Positioning in WLAN

This chapter describes indoor positioning solutions based on wireless local area network (WLANs), focuses on empirical approaches and problems affecting received signal strength (RSS) measurements not only caused by the surrounding environment but also by the users body and body parts interacting with hand-held devices and related signals. Basically, the intrinsic complexity of the indoor environment mixed with human body influence, represent the major sources of errors in measurements, setting great challenges for fast deployment of accurate solutions. An experimental activity result shows the effect of hand grip and the human body when performing RSS measurements for the localization of mass-market devices in indoor environments. The effects of the near-field perturbations caused by the close environment shows that the influence of hand grip on mass-market devices is a problem of growing importance in mobile positioning and tracking for commercial applications.