Measurements and analysis of fingerprinting structures for WLAN localization systems

Channel-based radio-frequency fingerprinting such as a channel impulse response (CIR), channel transfer function (CTF), and frequency coherence function (FCF) have been recently proposed to improve the accuracy at the physical layer; however, their empirical performance, advantages, and limitations have not been well reported. This paper provides a comprehensive empirical performance evaluation of RF location fingerprinting, focusing on a comparison of received-signal strength, CIR-, CTF-, and FCF-based fingerprinting using the weighted k-nearest neighbor pattern recognition technique. Frequency domain channel measurements in the IEEE 802.11 band taken on a university campus were used to evaluate the accuracy of the fingerprinting types and their robustness to human-induced motion perturbations of the channel. The localization performance was analyzed, and the results are described using the spatial and temporal radio propagation characteristics. In particular, we introduce the coherence region to explain the spatial properties and investigate the impact of the Doppler spread in time-varying channels on the time coherence of RF fingerprint structures.