Analysis of Received Signal Strength Quantization in Fingerprinting Localization

In recent times, Received Signal Strength (RSS)-based Wi-Fi fingerprinting localization has become one of the most promising techniques for indoor localization. The primary aim of RSS is to check the quality of the signal to determine the coverage and the quality of service. Therefore, fine-resolution RSS is needed, which is generally expressed by 1-dBm granularity. However, we found that, for fingerprinting localization, fine-granular RSS is unnecessary. A coarse-granular RSS can yield the same positioning accuracy. In this paper, we propose quantization for only the effective portion of the signal strength for fingerprinting localization. We found that, if a quantized RSS fingerprint can carry the major characteristics of a radio environment, it is sufficient for localization. Five publicly open fingerprinting databases with four different quantization strategies were used to evaluate the study. The proposed method can help to simplify the hardware configuration, enhance security, and save approximately 40–60% storage space and data traffic.