research-article

I am the antenna: accurate outdoor AP location using smartphones

Authors:

Yuanyang Zhang,

Haitao ZhengAuthors Info & Claims

MobiCom '11: Proceedings of the 17th annual international conference on Mobile computing and networking

Pages 109 - 120

https://doi.org/10.1145/2030613.2030626

Published: 19 September 2011 Publication History

Abstract

Today's WiFi access points (APs) are ubiquitous, and provide critical connectivity for a wide range of mobile networking devices. Many management tasks, e.g. optimizing AP placement and detecting rogue APs, require a user to efficiently determine the location of wireless APs. Unlike prior localization techniques that require either specialized equipment or extensive outdoor measurements, we propose a way to locate APs in real-time using commodity smartphones. Our insight is that by rotating a wireless receiver (smartphone) around a signal-blocking obstacle (the user's body), we can effectively emulate the sensitivity and functionality of a directional antenna. Our measurements show that we can detect these signal strength artifacts on multiple smartphone platforms for a variety of outdoor environments. We develop a model for detecting signal dips caused by blocking obstacles, and use it to produce a directional analysis technique that accurately predicts the direction of the AP, along with an associated confidence value. The result is Borealis, a system that provides accurate directional guidance and leads users to a desired AP after a few measurements. Detailed measurements show that Borealis is significantly more accurate than other real-time localization systems, and is nearly as accurate as offline approaches using extensive wireless measurements.

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Cited By

Zhang TZhang DWang GLi YHu Ysun QChen Y(2024)RLocProceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies10.1145/36314377:4(1-28)Online publication date: 12-Jan-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3631437
Lin XChen RHuang LLiu ZNiu XGuo GLi ZQian L(2024)ChirpTracker: A Precise-Location-Aware System for Acoustic Tag Using Single SmartphoneIEEE Internet of Things Journal10.1109/JIOT.2023.328759311:1(848-862)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/JIOT.2023.3287593
Lu BWang LWang WYu KGarg SJalil Piran MAlamri A(2023)On-Body Device Clustering for Security Preserving in Internet of ThingsIEEE Internet of Things Journal10.1109/JIOT.2021.311104110:4(2852-2863)Online publication date: 15-Feb-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/JIOT.2021.3111041
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Index Terms

I am the antenna: accurate outdoor AP location using smartphones
1. Networks
  1. Network architectures

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

MobiCom '11: Proceedings of the 17th annual international conference on Mobile computing and networking

September 2011

362 pages

ISBN:9781450304924

DOI:10.1145/2030613

General Chair:
Parmesh Ramanathan
University of Wisconsin, Madison
,
Program Chairs:
Thyaga Nandagopal
Bell Laboratories, Alcatel-Lucent
,
Brian Levine
University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Copyright © 2011 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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SIGMOBILE: ACM Special Interest Group on Mobility of Systems, Users, Data and Computing

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 19 September 2011

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Mobicom'11

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SIGMOBILE

Mobicom'11: The 17th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking

September 19 - 23, 2011

Nevada, Las Vegas, USA

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Overall Acceptance Rate 440 of 2,972 submissions, 15%

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Cited By

Zhang TZhang DWang GLi YHu Ysun QChen Y(2024)RLocProceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies10.1145/36314377:4(1-28)Online publication date: 12-Jan-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3631437
Lin XChen RHuang LLiu ZNiu XGuo GLi ZQian L(2024)ChirpTracker: A Precise-Location-Aware System for Acoustic Tag Using Single SmartphoneIEEE Internet of Things Journal10.1109/JIOT.2023.328759311:1(848-862)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/JIOT.2023.3287593
Lu BWang LWang WYu KGarg SJalil Piran MAlamri A(2023)On-Body Device Clustering for Security Preserving in Internet of ThingsIEEE Internet of Things Journal10.1109/JIOT.2021.311104110:4(2852-2863)Online publication date: 15-Feb-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/JIOT.2021.3111041
Prata Ida Silva Siqueira Almeida Ade Souza FRosa Pdos Santos A(2022)Developing a UAV platform for victim localization on search and rescue operations2022 IEEE 31st International Symposium on Industrial Electronics (ISIE)10.1109/ISIE51582.2022.9831708(721-726)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2022
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Cunningham RTan W(2022)Detection and Localization of Hidden Wi-Fi Cameras2022 27th Asia Pacific Conference on Communications (APCC)10.1109/APCC55198.2022.9943725(12-17)Online publication date: 19-Oct-2022
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