Calculation of quality of WLAN access point characterization for use in a WLAN positioning system

摘要

Methods and systems for classifying WLAN access points according to the quality of estimation of characteristics of the WLAN access points are provided. The classifications may be used to scale a reference database and quantify an expected error of estimation of the characteristics of the access points. WLAN access points may be classified based on their impact on a user's position, speed of travel, and direction of travel estimation accuracy in a WLAN positioning system. A method for determining a quality of estimation of characteristics of a Wi-Fi access point comprises a Wi-Fi enabled scanning device measuring a number of received signal strength (RSS) samples of the Wi-Fi signal transmitted by the Wi-Fi access point. A total distance traveled by the Wi-Fi enabled scanning device while measuring the number of RSS samples is estimated and used to estimate the quality of estimation of characteristics of the Wi-Fi access point.

主权项

1. A method of estimating a position of a wireless local area network (WLAN) enabled device, the method comprising:
receiving identities of WLAN access points within range of the WLAN enabled device; retrieving, by software of a WLAN positioning system executing on a computing device, one or more estimated characteristics and a quality metric of each of at least one of the identified WLAN access points from a reference database, wherein the estimated characteristics include a calculated location of a corresponding WLAN access point, and the quality metric of the corresponding WLAN access point is a measure of how accurately the estimated characteristics, including the calculated location, of the corresponding WLAN access point have been estimated; and estimating, by the software of the WLAN positioning system executing on the computing device or another computing device, the position of the WLAN enabled device, wherein the calculated location of each of the at least one of the identified WLAN access points is weighted when used in the estimating the position of the WLAN enabled device with a weight assigned to each calculated location determined based on the quality metric corresponding to the identified WLAN access point, or the calculated location of each of the at least one of the identified WLAN access points is excluded from use in the estimating the position of the WLAN enabled device based on the quality metric of the identified WLAN access point when the quality metric corresponding to the identified WLAN access point is below a threshold.