Exploiting Wireless Communications for Localization: Beyond Fingerprinting

Abstract

The field of Location-based Services (LBS) has experienced significant growth over the past decade, driven by increasing interest in fitness tracking, robotics, and eHealth. This dissertation focuses on evaluating privacy measures in Indoor Positioning Systems (IPS), particularly in the context of ubiquitous Wi-Fi networks. It addresses non-cooperative user tracking through the exploitation of unencrypted Wi-Fi management frames, which contain enough information for device fingerprinting despite MAC address randomization. The research also explores an algorithm to estimate room occupancy based on passive Wi-Fi frame sniffing and Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) measurements. Such room occupancy detection has implications for energy regulations in smart buildings. Furthermore, the thesis investigates methods to reduce computational requirements of machine learning and positioning algorithms through optimizing neural networks and employing interpolation techniques for IPS based on RSSI fingerprinting. The work contributes datasets, analysis scripts, and firmware to improve reproducibility and supports advancements in the LBS field.