{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,1,18]],"date-time":"2026-01-18T04:07:28Z","timestamp":1768709248927,"version":"3.49.0"},"reference-count":58,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"12","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2017,11,27]],"date-time":"2017-11-27T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1511740800000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"name":"COMPETE:","award":["POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007043"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007043"]}]},{"name":"FCT-Fundac\u0327a\u0303o para a Cie\u0302ncia e Tecnologia","award":["UID\/CEC\/00319\/2013"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["UID\/CEC\/00319\/2013"]}]},{"name":"Portugal Incentive System for Research and Technological Development","award":["iFACTORY 2015-2018"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["iFACTORY 2015-2018"]}]},{"name":"Ministerio de Educaci\u00f3n y Ciencia - Programa Jos\u00e9 Castillejo","award":["CAS16\/00072"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["CAS16\/00072"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Sensors"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Wi-Fi fingerprinting is widely used for indoor positioning and indoor navigation due to the ubiquity of wireless networks, high proliferation of Wi-Fi-enabled mobile devices, and its reasonable positioning accuracy. The assumption is that the position can be estimated based on the received signal strength intensity from multiple wireless access points at a given point. The positioning accuracy, within a few meters, enables the use of Wi-Fi fingerprinting in many different applications. However, it has been detected that the positioning error might be very large in a few cases, which might prevent its use in applications with high accuracy positioning requirements. Hybrid methods are the new trend in indoor positioning since they benefit from multiple diverse technologies (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Inertial Sensors, among many others) and, therefore, they can provide a more robust positioning accuracy. In order to have an optimal combination of technologies, it is crucial to identify when large errors occur and prevent the use of extremely bad positioning estimations in hybrid algorithms. This paper investigates why large positioning errors occur in Wi-Fi fingerprinting and how to detect them by using the received signal strength intensities.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/s17122736","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2017,11,27]],"date-time":"2017-11-27T11:07:08Z","timestamp":1511780828000},"page":"2736","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":43,"title":["Analysis of Sources of Large Positioning Errors in Deterministic Fingerprinting"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"17","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-4338-4334","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Joaqu\u00edn","family":"Torres-Sospedra","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Institute of New Imaging Technologies, Universitat Jaume I, 12071 Castell\u00f3n de la Plana, Spain"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-8967-118X","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Adriano","family":"Moreira","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Algoritmi Research Centre, University of Minho, 4800-058 Guimar\u00e3es, Portugal"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2017,11,27]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"166","DOI":"10.1016\/j.smr.2014.11.001","article-title":"Sport and social media research: A review","volume":"18","author":"Filo","year":"2015","journal-title":"Sport Manag. Rev."},{"key":"ref_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Potort\u00ec, F., Crivello, A., Girolami, M., Traficante, E., and Barsocchi, P. (2016, January 4\u20137). Wi-Fi Probes as Digital Crumbs for Crowd Localisation. Proceedings of the 2016 International Conference on Indoor Positioning and Indoor Navigation (IPIN), Alcala de Henares, Spain.","DOI":"10.1109\/IPIN.2016.7743599"},{"key":"ref_3","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"466","DOI":"10.1109\/TMC.2016.2550452","article-title":"Pallas: Self-Bootstrapping Fine-Grained Passive Indoor Localization Using WiFi Monitors","volume":"16","author":"Luo","year":"2017","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Mob. Comput."},{"key":"ref_4","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"3:1","DOI":"10.1147\/JRD.2014.2337552","article-title":"Understanding customer behavior using indoor location analysis and visualization","volume":"58","author":"Yaeli","year":"2014","journal-title":"IBM J. Res. Dev."},{"key":"ref_5","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"496","DOI":"10.1016\/j.robot.2008.10.022","article-title":"Mobile robot localization based on Ultra-Wide-Band ranging: A particle filter approach","volume":"57","author":"Blanco","year":"2009","journal-title":"Robot. Auton. Syst."},{"key":"ref_6","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Amini, A., Vaghefi, R.M., de la Garza, J.M., and Buehrer, R.M. (2014, January 8\u201311). Improving GPS-Based Vehicle Positioning for Intelligent Transportation Systems. Proceedings of the 2014 IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium, Dearborn, MI, USA.","DOI":"10.1109\/IVS.2014.6856592"},{"key":"ref_7","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"2965","DOI":"10.1109\/TIM.2015.2437637","article-title":"Indoor Positioning of a Robotic Walking Assistant for Large Public Environments","volume":"64","author":"Nazemzadeh","year":"2015","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Instrum. Meas."},{"key":"ref_8","first-page":"89","article-title":"Position, Location, Place and Area: An Indoor Perspective","volume":"Volume III-4","author":"Sithole","year":"2016","journal-title":"ISPRS Annals of Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences"},{"key":"ref_9","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"2141","DOI":"10.1016\/0960-1686(92)90402-7","article-title":"Activity patterns of Californians: Use of and proximity to indoor pollutant sources","volume":"26","author":"Jenkins","year":"1992","journal-title":"Atmos. Environ. Part A Gen. Top."},{"key":"ref_10","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"809","DOI":"10.1109\/34.868683","article-title":"W4: Real-time surveillance of people and their activities","volume":"22","author":"Haritaoglu","year":"2000","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell."},{"key":"ref_11","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"231","DOI":"10.1038\/sj.jea.7500165","article-title":"The National Human Activity Pattern Survey (NHAPS): A resource for assessing exposure to environmental pollutants","volume":"11","author":"Klepeis","year":"2001","journal-title":"J. Expo. Anal. Environ. Epidemiol."},{"key":"ref_12","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"247","DOI":"10.1016\/j.ijheh.2005.03.003","article-title":"Daily time spent indoors in German homes: A Baseline data for the assessment of indoor exposure of German occupants","volume":"208","author":"Brasche","year":"2005","journal-title":"Int. J. Hyg. Environ. Health"},{"key":"ref_13","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Flor\u00e9en, P., Kr\u00fcger, A., and Spasojevic, M. (2010, January 17\u201320). Indoor Positioning Using GPS Revisited. Proceedings of the Pervasive Computing: 8th International Conference on Pervasive Computing, Helsinki, Finland.","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-642-12654-3"},{"key":"ref_14","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1067","DOI":"10.1109\/TSMCC.2007.905750","article-title":"Survey of Wireless Indoor Positioning Techniques and Systems","volume":"37","author":"Liu","year":"2007","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Syst. Man Cybern. Part C (Appl. Rev.)"},{"key":"ref_15","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"13","DOI":"10.1109\/SURV.2009.090103","article-title":"A survey of indoor positioning systems for wireless personal networks","volume":"11","author":"Gu","year":"2009","journal-title":"IEEE Commun. Surv. Tutor."},{"key":"ref_16","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1","DOI":"10.1016\/j.cosrev.2017.03.002","article-title":"Indoor location based services challenges, requirements and usability of current solutions","volume":"24","author":"Basiri","year":"2017","journal-title":"Comput. Sci. Rev."},{"key":"ref_17","unstructured":"Bahl, V., and Padmanabhan, V. (2000). Enhancements to the RADAR User Location and Tracking System, Microsoft Research and Microsoft Corporation. Technical Report."},{"key":"ref_18","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"145","DOI":"10.1080\/17489720701781905","article-title":"Location determination using WiFi fingerprinting versus WiFi trilateration","volume":"1","author":"Mok","year":"2007","journal-title":"J. Locat. Based Serv."},{"key":"ref_19","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Marques, N., Meneses, F., and Moreira, A. (2012, January 13\u201315). Combining similarity functions and majority rules for multi-building, multi-floor, WiFi positioning. Proceedings of the 2012 International Conference on Indoor Positioning and Indoor Navigation (IPIN), Sydney, Australia.","DOI":"10.1109\/IPIN.2012.6418937"},{"key":"ref_20","unstructured":"Mautz, R. (2012). Indoor Positioning Technologies. [Habilitation Thesis, Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering, Institute of Geodesy and Photogrammetry, ETH Zurich]."},{"key":"ref_21","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Torres-Sospedra, J., Jim\u00e9nez, A.R., Knauth, S., Moreira, A., Beer, Y., Fetzer, T., Ta, V.C., Montoliu, R., Seco, F., and Mendoza-Silva, G.M. (2017). The Smartphone-Based Offline Indoor Location Competition at IPIN 2016: Analysis and Future Work. Sensors, 17.","DOI":"10.3390\/s17030557"},{"key":"ref_22","first-page":"263","article-title":"A realistic evaluation of indoor positioning systems based on Wi-Fi fingerprinting: The 2015 EvAAL-ETRI competition","volume":"9","author":"Moreira","year":"2017","journal-title":"JAISE"},{"key":"ref_23","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Held, D., Levinson, J., and Thrun, S. (2013, January 6\u201310). Precision Tracking with Sparse 3D and Dense Color 2D Data. Proceedings of the 2013 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Karlsruhe, Germany.","DOI":"10.1109\/ICRA.2013.6630715"},{"key":"ref_24","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Lu, Q., Liao, X., Xu, S., and Zhu, W. (2016, January 4\u20138). A Hybrid Indoor Positioning Algorithm Based on WiFi Fingerprinting and Pedestrian Dead Reckoning. Proceedings of the 2016 IEEE 27th Annual International Symposium on Personal, Indoor, and Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC), Valencia, Spain.","DOI":"10.1109\/PIMRC.2016.7794982"},{"key":"ref_25","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"15513","DOI":"10.3390\/s131115513","article-title":"Kalman\/Map Filtering-Aided Fast Normalized Cross Correlation-Based Wi-Fi Fingerprinting Location Sensing","volume":"13","author":"Sun","year":"2013","journal-title":"Sensors"},{"key":"ref_26","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Baniukevic, A., Sabonis, D., Jensen, C.S., and Lu, H. (2011, January 6\u20139). Improving Wi-Fi Based Indoor Positioning Using Bluetooth Add-Ons. Proceedings of the 2011 IEEE 12th International Conference on Mobile Data Management, Lulea, Sweden.","DOI":"10.1109\/MDM.2011.50"},{"key":"ref_27","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"71","DOI":"10.1016\/j.icte.2016.04.002","article-title":"A sensor fusion method for Wi-Fi-based indoor positioning","volume":"2","author":"Han","year":"2016","journal-title":"ICT Express"},{"key":"ref_28","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Dempster, A.G., Li, B., and Quader, I. (2008, January 7\u20139). Errors in Determinstic Wireless Fingerprinting Systems for localisation. Proceedings of the 2008 3rd International Symposium on Wireless Pervasive Computing, Santorini, Greece.","DOI":"10.1109\/ISWPC.2008.4556177"},{"key":"ref_29","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Choudhury, T., Quigley, A., Strang, T., and Suginuma, K. (2009, January 7\u20138). Error Estimation for Indoor 802.11 Location Fingerprinting. Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium Location and Context Awareness (LoCA), Tokyo, Japan.","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-642-01721-6"},{"key":"ref_30","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Farshad, A., Li, J., Marina, M.K., and Garcia, F.J. (2013, January 28\u201331). A Microscopic Look at WiFi Fingerprinting for Indoor Mobile Phone Localization in Diverse Environments. Proceedings of the International Conference on Indoor Positioning and Indoor Navigation, Montbeliard-Belfort, France.","DOI":"10.1109\/IPIN.2013.6817920"},{"key":"ref_31","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Deng, Z.A., Wang, G., Qin, D., Na, Z., Cui, Y., and Chen, J. (2016). Continuous Indoor Positioning Fusing WiFi, Smartphone Sensors and Landmarks. Sensors, 16.","DOI":"10.3390\/s16091427"},{"key":"ref_32","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Berkvens, R., Peremans, H., and Weyn, M. (2016). Conditional Entropy and Location Error in Indoor Localization Using Probabilistic Wi-Fi Fingerprinting. Sensors, 16.","DOI":"10.3390\/s16101636"},{"key":"ref_33","unstructured":"Montgomery, D.C. (2016). Design and Analysis of Experiments, Wiley. [8th ed.]."},{"key":"ref_34","unstructured":"Elnahrawy, E., Li, X., and Martin, R.P. (2004, January 4\u20137). The Limits of Localization Using Signal Strength: A Comparative Study. Proceedings of the 2004 First Annual IEEE Communications Society Conference on Sensor and Ad Hoc Communications and Networks, Santa Clara, CA, USA."},{"key":"ref_35","unstructured":"Kaemarungsi, K., and Krishnamurthy, P. (2004, January 7\u201311). Modeling of Indoor Positioning Systems Based on Location Fingerprinting. Proceedings of the IEEE INFOCOM, Hong Kong, China."},{"key":"ref_36","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"292","DOI":"10.1016\/j.pmcj.2011.09.003","article-title":"Analysis of WLAN\u2019s received signal strength indication for indoor location fingerprinting","volume":"8","author":"Kaemarungsi","year":"2012","journal-title":"Pervasive Mob. Comput."},{"key":"ref_37","unstructured":"Youssef, M., and Agrawala, A. (2004, January 18\u201321). On the Optimality of WLAN Location Determination Systems. Proceedings of the Communication Networks and Distributed Systems Modelling and Simulation Conference, San Diego, CA, USA."},{"key":"ref_38","unstructured":"Krishnakumar, A.S., and Krishnan, P. (2005, January 13\u201317). On the Accuracy of Signal Strength-Based Estimation Techniques. Proceedings of the IEEE 24th Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies, Miami, FL, USA."},{"key":"ref_39","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"560","DOI":"10.1016\/j.pmcj.2007.02.002","article-title":"A priori error estimates for wireless local area network positioning systems","volume":"3","author":"Wallbaum","year":"2007","journal-title":"Pervasive Mob. Comput."},{"key":"ref_40","unstructured":"Damosso, E., Correia, L.M., and European Commission (1999). DGX III \u201cTelecommunications, Information Market and Exploitation of Research\u201d. COST Action 231: Digital Mobile Radio towards Future Generation Systems: Final Report, European Commission."},{"key":"ref_41","unstructured":"Haeberlen, A., Flannery, E., Ladd, A.M., Rudys, A., Wallach, D.S., and Kavraki, L.E. (October, January 26). Practical Robust Localization over Large-Scale 802.11 Wireless Networks. Proceedings of the 10th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking (MobiCom \u201904), Philadelphia, PA, USA."},{"key":"ref_42","unstructured":"Bahl, P., and Padmanabhan, V.N. (2000, January 26\u201330). RADAR: An In-Building RF-Based User Location and Tracking System. Proceedings of the IEEE INFOCOM 2000, The Conference on Computer Communications, Nineteenth Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies, Reaching the Promised Land of Communications, Tel Aviv, Israel."},{"key":"ref_43","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Youssef, M., and Agrawala, A.K. (2005, January 6\u20138). The Horus WLAN Location Determination System. Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services, Washington, DC, USA.","DOI":"10.1145\/1067170.1067193"},{"key":"ref_44","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Garcia-Villalonga, S., and Perez-Navarro, A. (2015, January 13\u201316). Influence of Human Absorption of Wi-Fi Signal in Indoor Positioning with Wi-Fi Fingerprinting. Proceedings of the 2015 International Conference on Indoor Positioning and Indoor Navigation (IPIN), Banff, AB, Canada.","DOI":"10.1109\/IPIN.2015.7346778"},{"key":"ref_45","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1974","DOI":"10.1109\/COMST.2017.2671454","article-title":"Modern WLAN Fingerprinting Indoor Positioning Methods and Deployment Challenges","volume":"19","author":"Khalajmehrabadi","year":"2017","journal-title":"IEEE Commun. Surv. Tutor."},{"key":"ref_46","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Moreira, A., Silva, I., Meneses, F., Nicolau, M., Ao, C.P., and Torres-Sospedra, J. (2017, January 18\u201321). Multiple simultaneous Wi-Fi measurements in fingerprinting indoor positioning. Proceedings of the 2017 International Conference on Indoor Positioning and Indoor Navigation (IPIN), Sapporo, Japan.","DOI":"10.1109\/IPIN.2017.8115914"},{"key":"ref_47","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"2921","DOI":"10.1109\/JSEN.2014.2325775","article-title":"Enhanced Inertial-Aided Indoor Tracking System for Wireless Sensor Networks: A Review","volume":"14","author":"Correa","year":"2014","journal-title":"IEEE Sens. J."},{"key":"ref_48","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"90","DOI":"10.1109\/35.601747","article-title":"Rayleigh fading channels in mobile digital communication systems. I. Characterization","volume":"35","author":"Sklar","year":"1997","journal-title":"IEEE Commun. Mag."},{"key":"ref_49","first-page":"739","article-title":"Characterization of Smart Phone Received Signal Strength Indication for WLAN Indoor Positioning Accuracy Improvement","volume":"9","author":"Luo","year":"2014","journal-title":"J. Netw."},{"key":"ref_50","first-page":"300","article-title":"Comprehensive Survey on Distance\/Similarity Measures between Probability Density Functions","volume":"1","author":"Cha","year":"2007","journal-title":"Int. J. Math. Models Methods Appl. Sci."},{"key":"ref_51","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Laitinen, E., Talvitie, J., and Lohan, E.S. (2015, January 8\u201312). On the RSS biases in WLAN-based indoor positioning. Proceedings of the 2015 IEEE International Conference on Communication Workshop (ICCW), London, UK.","DOI":"10.1109\/ICCW.2015.7247277"},{"key":"ref_52","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Chen, Y.C., Chiang, J.R., Chu, H.H., Huang, P., and Tsui, A.W. (2005, January 10\u201313). Sensor-Assisted Wi-Fi Indoor Location System for Adapting to Environmental Dynamics. Proceedings of the 8th ACM International Symposium on Modeling, Analysis and Simulation of Wireless and Mobile Systems (MSWiM \u201905), Montreal, QC, Canada.","DOI":"10.1145\/1089444.1089466"},{"key":"ref_53","first-page":"6092618:1","article-title":"Providing Databases for Different Indoor Positioning Technologies: Pros and Cons of Magnetic Field and Wi-Fi Based Positioning","volume":"2016","author":"Montoliu","year":"2016","journal-title":"Mob. Inf. Syst."},{"key":"ref_54","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Mendoza-Silva, G.M., Torres-Sospedra, J., and Huerta, J. (2007, January 18\u201321). A More Realistic Error Distance Calculation for Indoor Positioning Systems Accuracy Evaluation. Proceedings of the 2017 International Conference on Indoor Positioning and Indoor Navigation (IPIN), Sapporo, Japan.","DOI":"10.1109\/IPIN.2017.8115950"},{"key":"ref_55","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Shrestha, S., Talvitie, J., and Lohan, E.S. (2013, January 25\u201327). Deconvolution-Based Indoor Localization with WLAN Signals and Unknown Access Point Locations. Proceedings of the 2013 International Conference on Localization and GNSS (ICL-GNSS), Turin, Italy.","DOI":"10.1109\/ICL-GNSS.2013.6577256"},{"key":"ref_56","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Talvitie, J., Lohan, E.S., and Renfors, M. (2014, January 24\u201326). The effect of Coverage Gaps and Measurement Inaccuracies in Fingerprinting Based Indoor Localization. Proceedings of the International Conference on Localization and GNSS 2014 (ICL-GNSS 2014), Helsinki, Finland.","DOI":"10.1109\/ICL-GNSS.2014.6934181"},{"key":"ref_57","unstructured":"Lohan, E., Torres-Sospedra, J., Richter, P., Lepp\u00e4koski, H., Huerta, J., and Cramariuc, A. (2017). Crowdsourced WiFi-Fingerprinting Database and Benchmark Software for Indoor Positioning. Zenodo."},{"key":"ref_58","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Lohan, E.S., Torres-Sospedra, J., Lepp\u00e4koski, H., Richter, P., Peng, Z., and Huerta, J. (2017). Wi-Fi Crowdsourced Fingerprinting Dataset for Indoor Positioning. Data, 2.","DOI":"10.3390\/data2040032"}],"container-title":["Sensors"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/1424-8220\/17\/12\/2736\/pdf","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,11]],"date-time":"2025-10-11T18:51:32Z","timestamp":1760208692000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/1424-8220\/17\/12\/2736"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2017,11,27]]},"references-count":58,"journal-issue":{"issue":"12","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2017,12]]}},"alternative-id":["s17122736"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/s17122736","relation":{},"ISSN":["1424-8220"],"issn-type":[{"value":"1424-8220","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2017,11,27]]}}}