In plain words: It places WiFi signal readings onto a building map using a rough sketch, approximate router locations, and a few room-tagged readings instead of exact coordinates. It reaches meter-level accuracy even when signals bounce off walls, where signal-processing tricks fail and trained systems need centimeter-precise labels.
Abstract
We introduce WiCluster, a new machine learning (ML) approach for passive indoor positioning using radio frequency (RF) channel state information (CSI). WiCluster can predict both a zone-level position and a precise 2D or 3D position, without using any precise position labels during training. Prior CSI-based indoor positioning work has relied on non-parametric approaches using digital signal-processing (DSP) and, more recently, parametric approaches (e.g., fully supervised ML methods). However these do not handle the complexity of real-world environments well and do not meet requirements for large-scale commercial deployments: the accuracy of DSP-based method deteriorates significantly in non-line-of-sight conditions, while supervised ML methods need large amounts of hard-to-acquire centimeter accuracy position labels. In contrast, WiCluster is precise, requires weaker label-information that can be easily collected, and works well in non-line-of-sight conditions. Our first contribution is a novel dimensionality reduction method for charting. It combines a triplet-loss with a multi-scale clustering-loss to map the high-dimensional CSI representation to a 2D/3D latent space. Our second contribution is two weakly supervised losses that map this latent space into a Cartesian map, resulting in meter-accuracy position results. These losses only require simple to acquire priors: a sketch of the floorplan, approximate access-point locations and a few CSI packets that are labelled with the corresponding zone in the floorplan. Thirdly, we report results and a robustness study for 2D positioning in two single-floor office buildings and 3D positioning in a two-story home.
Ilia Karmanov, Farhad G. Zanjani, Simone Merlin, Ishaque Kadampot, Daniel Dijkman
arXiv:2107.01002 · cs.NI, cs.CV, cs.LG, eess.SP · submitted May 31, 2021 · updated Sep 27, 2021
abstract · pdf · html · IEEE Globecom 2021
"We propose a novel dimensionality reduction technique that uses cross-dimension and multi-scale clustering to preserve local and global structure. Combining this with representation learning we can generate a 2D/3D latent-space that is topologically close to the real space and can be used for zone-level classification already. We demonstrate that by incorporating some real-world measurements we can transport this to a Cartesian map. As a result we are able to predict precise 2D or 3D positions for a single person in a realistic indoor environment, without using any precise position labels during training."