Navigating Using Wireless Access Points (NUWAP)
Date
2013-08
Authors
Horn, Aaron Gabriel
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Abstract
Wireless Geographic Logging Engine (WiGLE), the best known organization for tracking Wireless Local Area Networks (WLAN) reports 91,813,202 unique Wi-Fi access points in their system worldwide. WLANs are very common in urban areas, yet the uses of them are underutilized for navigation. Assisted Global Positioning Systems (A-GPS) is the most common use for WLAN in navigation in order to decrease the time needed to find the user's current location. To further utilize WLAN, wireless positioning systems on mobile computing devices can be created which only utilize WLAN. To fulfill the need for indoor navigation, we propose Navigation Using Wireless Access Points (NUWAP), a system which only utilizes WLAN that would be used where Global Positioning Systems (GPS) perform poorly. Such areas would include shopping centers, hospitals, schools, conference centers, and sport stadiums. In order to make wireless positioning systems, such as NUWAP, more common place research focusing on algorithms using pre-existing WLAN in the fields of access point plotting and navigation methods are studied. Using NUWAP, experiments were conducted to discover how router range and router density affect the chances that a path will be found. The results from these experiments show that wireless access points selection is not as important when the density of access point is large. From this research, a set of algorithms was created to help future local wireless navigation systems guide their users towards their destination.
Description
Keywords
navigation systems, wi-fi, GPS, router, WLAN, Honors College
Citation
Horn, A. G. (2013). Navigating Using Wireless Access Points (NUWAP) (Unpublished thesis). Texas State University-San Marcos, San Marcos, Texas.