IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SYSTEMS, MAN, AND CYBERNETICS: SYSTEMS
Methods and Tools to Construct a Global
Indoor Positioning System
Suk-Hoon Jung, Gunwoo Lee, and Dongsoo Han, Member, IEEE
Abstract—A global indoor positioning system (GIPS) is
a system that provides positioning services in most buildings in
villages and cities globally. Among the various indoor positioning
techniques, WLAN-based location fingerprinting has attracted
considerable attention because of the wide availability of WLAN
and relatively high resolution of the fingerprint-based position-
ing techniques. This paper introduces methods and tools to
construct a GIPS by using WLAN fingerprinting. An unsu-
pervised learning-based method is adopted to construct radio
maps using fingerprints collected via crowdsourcing, and a prob-
abilistic indoor positioning algorithm is developed for the radio
maps constructed with the crowdsourced fingerprints. Along with
these techniques, collecting indoor and radio maps of build-
ings in villages and cities is essential for a GIPS. This paper
aims to collect indoor and radio maps from volunteers who are
interested in deploying indoor positioning systems for their build-
ings. The methods and tools for the volunteers are also described
in the process of developing an indoor positioning system within
the larger GIPS. An experimental GIPS, named KAIST indoor
locating system (KAILOS), was developed integrating the meth-
ods and tools. Then indoor navigation systems for a university
campus and a large-scale indoor shopping mall were developed on
KAILOS, revealing the effectiveness of KAILOS in developing
indoor positioning systems. The more volunteers who partici-
pate in developing indoor positioning systems on KAILOS-like
systems, the sooner GIPS will be realized.
Index Terms—Crowdsourcing, global indoor localization, unsu-
pervised learning, Wi-Fi fingerprinting, zero-effort site survey.
I. I NTRODUCTION
GLOBAL indoor positioning system (GIPS) is a system
A that can provide positioning services in most buildings
in villages and cities globally. The goals of wide availability
and high resolution should be accomplished for a position-
ing system to be a GIPS. While the global positioning
system (GPS) has been dominantly used outdoors since its
Manuscript received August 16, 2016; accepted October 25, 2016.
This work was supported in part by the National Research Foundation
of Korea through the Korea Government (MSIP) under Grant
2015R1A2A1A10052224, in part by the Center for Integrated Smart
Sensors through the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning as
Global Frontier Project under Grant 2012M3A6A6054195, and in part
by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy and Korea Institute for
Advancement of Technology through the Industry Promotion Project in
Economic Regions under Grant R0004559. This paper was recommended by
Associate Editor D. Akopian. (Corresponding author: Dongsoo Han.)
The authors are with the Department of Computer Science, Korea Advanced
Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon 305-701, South Korea (e-mail:
sh.jung@kaist.ac.kr; gwleee@kaist.ac.kr; dshan@kaist.ac.kr).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available
online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TSMC.2016.2626797
2168-2216 c 2016 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
1
completion in the early 1990s, no GIPS with such a wide
availability and high resolution has yet appeared.
Various signals, such as cell-tower signals, ultrawideband,
Wi-Fi, ZigBee, Bluetooth, magnetic fields, and ultrasounds can
be used for indoor positioning [1]. Among these signals, the
Wi-Fi signal is one of the best candidates to construct a GIPS
because of its widespread availability of Wi-Fi hot spots all
over the world. However, the wide availability of Wi-Fi signals
does not guarantee a high resolution of Wi-Fi-based position-
ing systems. Among the positioning techniques using Wi-Fi
signals, Wi-Fi fingerprint-based positioning is one of the best
choices to achieve high positioning accuracy [2]. Here, a fin-
gerprint is Wi-Fi signal characteristics at a location represented
with a set of received signal strengths (RSSs) from multiple
access points (APs). The Wi-Fi fingerprint-based positioning,
however, requires a laborious and time-consuming calibration
phase in which fingerprints are collected at known locations
to construct a radio map. Once a radio map is constructed, the
location of a device can be estimated by matching an online
fingerprint with the fingerprints in the radio map [2].
However, constructing precise radio maps covering most
buildings in cities globally requires tremendous time and
effort. Consequently, reducing calibration efforts to construct
radio maps has long been a critical issue in this research
area [3]. Google has been collecting indoor floor plans and
radio maps by crowdsourcing since the end of 2011 [4].
Thousands of floor plans have been collected, but until now,
they have been mainly from large-scale buildings such as
airport terminals, shopping malls, and exhibition centers.
However, precise positioning services are not yet available in
most buildings because of lack of radio maps which require
manual calibration efforts.
In fact, constructing a GIPS that integrates indoor maps,
radio maps, and positioning algorithms is a large, complex
project. This paper introduces methods and tools to construct
a GIPS by using Wi-Fi signals. The key idea is to realize
a GIPS by crowdsourcing indoor and radio maps from vol-
unteers who are interested in developing or deploying indoor
positioning systems for their buildings.
The reason we employ a crowdsourcing approach is that it
is the only way to collect indoor maps and construct radio
maps globally at a very low cost in a short period of time.
We developed an unsupervised learning-based radio map con-
struction method to construct radio maps with crowdsourced
fingerprints collected without location information. However,
all the radio maps for the GIPS need not be constructed this
way. We also developed tools and Web interfaces to collect
2 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SYSTEMS, MAN, AND CYBERNETICS: SYSTEMS
radio maps from volunteers on the Internet. This radio map
collection strategy inevitably results in diverse types of radio
maps because collected radio maps may be constructed in
various ways.
The GIPS has to deal with such various types of radio
maps, especially in the choice of positioning algorithms. One
positioning algorithm cannot always outperform other algo-
rithms for all types of radio maps [2], [5]. Therefore, for better
positioning performance, the GIPS should be equipped with
multiple positioning algorithms and switch from one algorithm
to another depending on radio map types. Mapping radio maps
into appropriate positioning algorithms is an essential func-
tion of the GIPS. In this paper, we propose a method to
map radio maps into positioning algorithms. Also we pro-
pose a new probabilistic positioning algorithm adapted for
crowdsourced radio maps, because most existing positioning
algorithms have not been designed to deal with the diversity
of crowdsourced data.
Using the methods and tools needed for the GIPS, an exper-
imental GIPS, KAIST indoor locating system (KAILOS) was
developed. KAILOS allows anyone to contribute indoor and
radio maps of buildings by using its methods, tools, and
interfaces. In return, it provides indoor positioning and navi-
gation services for the buildings. KAILOS has a long way to
go to cover most of the buildings in villages and cities glob-
ally. Nevertheless, it was used very effectively for developing
indoor positioning and navigation systems in some confined
areas such as COEX mall, Seoul, South Korea, and the KAIST
campus, Daejeon, South Korea. In addition, it turned out that
the unsupervised leaning-based radio map construction method
and the proposed probabilistic positioning algorithm could be
effectively used in reducing the cost of radio map construction
and improving the accuracy of crowdsourcing-based indoor
positioning.
The contribution of this paper is threefold. First, this
paper introduces the concept of a crowdsourcing-based
GIPS. Second, we propose three new methods to support the
construction of a GIPS.
1) An unsupervised learning-based method for the crowd-
sourcing of radio maps.
2) A probabilistic positioning algorithm adapted for crowd-
sourced radio maps.
3) Positioning algorithm selection method for diverse types
of crowdsourced radio maps.
Last, this paper introduces an experimental GIPS, KAILOS,
with its application examples in six areas including a large
shopping mall and a university campus. The three proposed
methods were integrated into KAILOS.
II. L OCATION T ECHNOLOGY S TACK
A positioning technology stack is a layered structure of
technical and environmental elements required to implement
positioning systems and services. Signals, maps, positioning
systems, and location-based applications are the major compo-
nents constituting a positioning technology stack. Fig. 1 shows
the layered architecture of such technical and environmental
elements in the positioning technology stack. As illustrated in
Fig. 1. Positioning technology stack.
the figure, there is only a slight difference between outdoor and
indoor positioning environments from the technology point of
view.
Signal environments are the fundamental basis of a posi-
tioning service. Without the presence of appropriate signals,
positioning service is not possible in both indoor and out-
door environments. From an availability point of view, 3G,
4G, and Wi-Fi signals can be used for the GIPS because they
are available in most buildings in cities. However, from an
accuracy point of view, there is no other way but to use Wi-Fi
signals incorporated with fingerprint-based positioning tech-
niques. Thus, radio maps, which are collections of fingerprints
with their collected locations, should be constructed for most
of the buildings globally.
Map environments are another fundamental basis of posi-
tioning systems and services. Without a map, the positioning
service can hardly be provided to users. In addition, many
advanced positioning techniques, such as sensor placement
optimization [6], user tracking [7], [8], map-matching [9],
and calibration effort reduction methods [3], are usually
performed based on structured models derived from indoor
maps. Partitioning and drawing road networks for an area are
typical examples of the modeling [10], [11]. A more complex
modeling can be done with a state machine such as a hid-
den Markov model (HMM) [12], [13]. We leave the details to
Section III-A.
A positioning system mounted on the map environment
is the core of the positioning technology stack. It estimates
locations of the signals captured by GPS receivers or Wi-Fi
modules (here we focus mainly on Wi-Fi signals). Trilateration
is typically used for GPS positioning, and the fingerprint-based
approach is often used for Wi-Fi-based indoor positioning.
Thus, in Wi-Fi-based positioning, radio maps are additionally
required for location estimation.
Various location-based applications, such as navigation sys-
tems, can be developed using positioning systems. Although
the positioning systems can be integrated with the applications,
a positioning service platform is usually placed between the
positioning systems and the applications. Hence, the position-
ing service platform layer is placed on top of the positioning
system layer. Lastly, the location-based applications layer is
placed on the top of the stack.
JUNG et al.: METHODS AND TOOLS TO CONSTRUCT GIPS
Fig. 2. Process of indoor positioning system deployment.
III. M ETHODS AND T OOLS TO C ONSTRUCT GIPS
A. Deployment Process of Indoor Positioning System
Prior to describing the construction of a GIPS, we formu-
late the process of installing an indoor positioning system in
a building. Various activities should be performed to deploy
a fingerprint-based indoor positioning system. Indoor maps
should be prepared (step 1), and a model of the area is
required for radio map construction and more advanced tech-
niques (step 2). Radio maps are then constructed for the
modeled indoor area by using one of the radio map construc-
tion methods (step 3). Once the construction of a radio map
is completed, an indoor positioning system is installed on top
of the radio maps (step 4). Testing and evaluation must be
performed to ensure the quality of the deployed indoor posi-
tioning systems (step 5). Fig. 2 illustrates the overall process
of deploying a fingerprint-based indoor positioning system in
a building. The following sections describe the detailed activ-
ities required at each step along with the methods and tools
provided by KALOS, an experimental GIPS we developed.
B. Indoor Map Registration and Modeling
1) Indoor Map Drawing and Registration: An indoor map
is the basis for developing a fingerprint-based indoor posi-
tioning system. The collection of fingerprints, installation of
positioning systems, and provision of positioning services can
hardly be performed without indoor maps. However, indoor
maps of the majority of the buildings in cities are not yet
available. Crowdsourcing seems to be the only possible way to
address this problem. To support the crowdsourcing of indoor
3
maps, the KAILOS provides tools and interfaces for volun-
teers all over the world. Building registration should be the
first step in the collection process. This is done by drawing
a polygon for the area of the building on an outdoor map.
Floor map registration is performed after the building registra-
tion by uploading image files for the maps. The KAILOS also
provides interfaces to register points of interests (POIs), such
as room numbers and store names, on the registered indoor
map for users to provide the information of locations.
2) Modeling of Indoor Areas: To collect fingerprints and
represent them in relation to locations, modeling of the indoor
area is required. Partitioning is a basic modeling technique
to define each location for collecting fingerprints in an area.
Road networks are usually used to support the optimization
of map-matching and user tracking [8]. A state machine is
often used to represent the topological relations of the loca-
tions induced by walls and doors in an indoor area [12]. An
HMM, which is a variation of the state machine, is used to
model the movement of users in a probabilistic framework.
The transition and emission probabilities of the HMM match
well to the movement of users and fingerprints observed during
the movement, respectively [12].
Supporting partitioning and road network modeling is rather
simple and straightforward. It is only necessary to provide
tools to draw road networks on indoor maps. Unlike the
modeling of road networks, HMM modeling involves a rather
complex process. The first requirement for HMM modeling
is to partition each floor area into small locations. Each loca-
tion of an indoor area is then mapped onto a state of the
HMM (see step 2 in Fig. 2). Typically, the transition proba-
bilities among the states are empirically determined under the
4 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SYSTEMS, MAN, AND CYBERNETICS: SYSTEMS
Fig. 3. Radio map construction methods. (a) Point-by-point calibration.
(b) Walking survey. (c) Sensor-based labeling. (d) Semisupervised learning.
structural constraint imposed by walls and doors. The emission
probabilities, however, are determined later after the construc-
tion of a radio map with a probabilistic representation of
collected fingerprints. KAILOS tries to automate the modeling
process; it automatically builds an indoor model with location
partitions, a road network, and a HMM once walls and doors
are manually specified.
C. Radio Map Construction
Radio map construction is usually performed on the models
just described. In fact, radio map construction is one of the
key features distinguishing the KAILOS from other ordinary
indoor positioning systems. It aims to support several kinds
of radio map construction methods, including a novel unsu-
pervised learning-based location-labeling method (ULM) for
crowdsourced fingerprints collected without location informa-
tion. The ULM is expected to greatly reduce the time and
effort needed to construct radio maps [14]. In this section, we
present the existing radio map construction methods and the
proposed ULM for the KAILOS.
The first radio map construction method is point-by-point
manual calibration (PMC). The primary goal of this method
is to achieve the highest accuracy without much regard
for the calibration cost. In this method, an indoor area is
partitioned into numerous pieces, i.e., locations, and then dedi-
cated surveyors collect fingerprint samples point-by-point [see
Fig. 3(a)]. Because PMC requires considerable time and effort,
a walking survey was used instead to reduce the effort required
to recognize each location [10]. In the walking survey, the sur-
vey paths are planned in advance to guide the surveyors, but
the collection points are not specified [see Fig. 3(b)]. The fin-
gerprints are collected while the surveyors are walking along
the paths carrying collection devices.
Although the walking survey can reduce the collection effort
to some extent, it still requires considerable time and effort to
construct radio maps for most of buildings all over the world.
As a result, crowdsourcing approaches in which fingerprint
samples are collected from numerous users without location
information have been proposed to reduce the cost of con-
structing radio maps [14]. The crowdsourced fingerprint can
be viewed as unlabeled data since the true locations at which
the samples have been obtained are unknown. Therefore, the
labeling of unlabeled samples with location information should
be addressed to construct radio maps.
Pedestrian dead reckoning (PDR) using inertial sensors
embedded in wireless devices, such as a three-axis accelerom-
eter, a compass, and a gyroscope, can be used for estimating
location of the users [15]. Microsoft Zee [16], UnLoc [17],
WILL [18], LiFS [19], and others seek to incorporate PDR
techniques for the fingerprints labeling by referring to sensing
data from inertial sensors and to the location of stairs, eleva-
tors, and other features in an indoor area [see Fig. 3(c)]. These
so-called sensor-based methods can further reduce the collec-
tion effort. However, the involvement of additional sensors
impedes the contribution of fingerprints from numerous smart-
phones because sensor operation consumes additional power.
Semisupervised learning techniques, such as manifold
learning [20]–[22] and expectation maximization [12], [23],
can be applied for estimating the unknown locations of sam-
ples if a small number of labeled samples are provided as
location references. The locations of APs or GPS fixes have
often been used for the location references instead of the
labeled fingerprints [24] [see Fig. 3(d)]. The semisupervised
learning aims to further reduce the manual calibration cost,
and it also contributed to the reduction of the cost to some
extent. However, it still requires some effort to acquire the
references.
The ULM estimates the location labels of crowdsourced fin-
gerprints collected from numerous smartphones. This method
is distinguished from the semisupervised learning- and the
sensor-based methods because it does not require any explicit
labeling effort or sensing data for reference. The ULM, which
has been implemented in the KAILOS for the first time, allows
the fingerprints collected without location information to be
used for the construction of radio maps.
Fig. 4 shows an overview of the method. Here, the tar-
get area is assumed to have already been modeled with
location-states and their topology in an HMM. When a set
of unlabeled fingerprint sequences has been collected from
known locations in a building, ULM determines an opti-
mized placement of the fingerprints in the HMM to build
a radio map. ULM integrates global search and local optimiza-
tion in a hybrid learning framework. The local optimization
adopts the strategy of unsupervised HMM training, which
estimates the model parameters of an HMM given unlabeled
data using expectation-maximization (EM) style algorithms,
such as Baum-Welch and Viterbi training algorithms. ULM
uses Viterbi training algorithm for the local optimization,
because it spontaneously finds the optimal placement of the
unlabeled sequences in the HMM during the training [25].
EM-style algorithms for HMM training take local search
approach, and therefore they often get stuck in local
optima especially when they have to deal with a complex
problem like the location-labeling of fingerprints. To cope with
this problem, a good initial guess of HMM parameters should
be provided as the starting point of the training. The previous
semisupervised learning methods can make the good initial
guess with manually-labeled fingerprints. On the other hand,
in ULM, the global search iteratively improves the initial guess
JUNG et al.: METHODS AND TOOLS TO CONSTRUCT GIPS
Fig. 4. ULM to label the location of crowdsourced fingerprint sequences.
and provides the improvements to the local optimization [14].
The global search and local optimization algorithms are
integrated into a memetic algorithm (MA), which is an evo-
lutionary approach that provides an efficient way to address
optimization problems through the interaction between global
and local optimizations. This interaction requires a significant
computational time; the time complexity is (G · P · M · N),
where G and P are, respectively, the number of generations
and the size of population for the MA, M is the number
of locations, and N is the number of unlabeled fingerprints.
Although the ULM requires a considerable computational cost,
it can drastically reduce the manual effort needed to construct
radio maps.
D. Mapping of Radio Maps and Positioning Algorithms
Once a radio map is constructed, a positioning system
equipped with various positioning algorithms can be installed
on the top the radio map to provide a positioning service.
Installing a positioning system is one of critical steps in
deploying an indoor positioning system in a building. If a GIPS
employs multiple types of radio map construction methods
to increase the coverage of the system, the radio maps col-
lected in the GIPS also would be diverse in terms of the
density and the regularity of fingerprints over locations. In
that case, the choice of a positioning algorithm appropriate for
each radio map type is important to achieve high positioning
accuracy.
In this section, we describe the mapping between radio maps
and positioning algorithms for the GIPS. We start this with
a brief introduction to existing positioning algorithms.
1) Positioning Algorithms: Positioning algorithms can be
classified into two groups: 1) deterministic and 2) probabilis-
tic. Deterministic algorithms estimate locations by considering
5
RSS measurements as deterministic features, whereas prob-
abilistic algorithms estimate locations considering RSS mea-
surements as part of a random process [26]. More specifically,
positioning algorithms that estimate locations by searching
the nearest fingerprints in radio maps for an online mea-
surement, such as k-nearest neighbors (kNN) and weighted
kNN (WkNN), belong to the deterministic positioning algo-
rithm category. Euclidean distance, Manhattan distance, and
cosine distance have been used for the nearest fingerprint
search [27]. On the other hand, positioning algorithms that
estimate locations based on the probability distributions of sig-
nal strengths, such as Bayesian inference and Viterbi tracking
algorithm, belong to the probabilistic positioning algorithm
category. The Bayesian inference is a typical example of prob-
abilistic positioning algorithms. It estimate the location of
a fingerprint o∗ scanned from a device by finding a location l
that maximizes the Bayesian equation
  Pr(o∗ |l)Pr(l)
Pr l|o∗ = (1)
Pr(o∗ )
where Pr(l) encodes prior knowledge about where a device
may be. The probability Pr(l|o∗ ) is calculated based on
RSS distributions trained in location l, using various dis-
tribution models, such as a histogram [28], Gaussian dis-
tribution, log-normal distribution [29], double-peak Gaussian
distribution [30], etc. These various distribution models can
also be used for the emission probability calculation in
Viterbi algorithm (VA), which finds a most likely sequence
of locations given a fingerprint sequence.
2) Mapping Radio Maps Into Positioning Algorithms:
In general, probabilistic positioning algorithms can achieve
a good performance if they run on radio maps with a high
fingerprint density, but they do not provide usable results
if low-density radio maps are used [2]. If less than around
6 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SYSTEMS, MAN, AND CYBERNETICS: SYSTEMS
Fig. 5. Mapping of radio map construction methods, radio maps, and
positioning algorithms.
10 fingerprints have been collected at each location, determin-
istic algorithms would be better choices than the probabilistic
algorithms. A single positioning algorithm can hardly be
expected to achieve a good performance on both low- and
high-density radio maps. Hence, a GIPS must be equipped
with several positioning algorithms and select the most appro-
priate one depending on the characteristics of the respective
radio map types.
We classify radio maps into four types according to their
construction method and the average number of fingerprints
collected at each location, because these are two main factors
that determine the density and the regularity of fingerprints in
a radio map. The radio map types and their detailed conditions
are as follows.
1) Regular-Highly-Dense Radio Map: PMC, n > 20, where
n is the average number of fingerprint samples collected
at each location.
2) Regular-Dense Radio Map: PMC, 10 < n = 20.
3) Regular-Compact Radio Map: PMC, n = 10.
4) Regular-Sparse Radio Map: Walking survey.
5) Irregular Radio Map: Crowdsourcing.
Fig. 5 shows radio maps types constructed by each con-
struction methods and their mapping to positioning algorithms.
As shown in the figure, PMC could generate three types of
radio maps: 1) regular-highly-dense; 2) regular-dense; and
3) regular-compact radio maps. If more than 20 fingerprints
have been collected at each location by PMC, the constructed
radio map is classified as the regular-highly-dense type. If
a radio map is constructed with 11–20 fingerprints at each
location, it is classified as the regular-dense type. A regular-
compact radio map is constructed if ten or fewer fingerprints
have been used for each location.
On the other hand, the walking survey method constructs
radio maps classified as a regular-sparse type. The constructed
radio maps are assumed to be regular because fingerprints are
collected along preplanned survey paths. They are also sparse
because typically only one or a few fingerprints are collected
at each location during the survey walks.
Unlike PMC and the walking survey, crowdsourcing
approaches, such as semisupervised learning and ULM, col-
lect fingerprints from numerous users at arbitrary locations by
chance. Therefore, the crowdsourced fingerprints are irregular
over locations, and irregular radio maps are generated.
The main feature that determines which positioning algo-
rithm is appropriate for a radio map is the density. Probabilistic
positioning algorithms are known to achieve better accu-
racy than deterministic algorithms because they refer to more
precise signal patterns modeled as RSS distributions [2].
However, considerable fingerprint samples are required to
build a reliable RSS distribution at a location [2], [5]. As
results, probabilistic algorithms, such as histogram, kernel, and
Gaussian methods, can achieve their desired accuracy only
with dense radio map types, such as regular-highly-dense and
regular-dense radio maps. Histogram method is appropriate
for regular-highly-dense radio maps because building a his-
togram for an RSS pattern requires usually more than dozens
of fingerprint samples. Kernel and Gaussian methods model
their distributions less precisely than the histogram method,
and therefore can be used for regular-dense radio maps.
On the other hand, if less than around ten fingerprints
have been collected at each location, there is no other option
but to use deterministic positioning algorithms [5], such as
kNN or WkNN [31]. Therefore, the deterministic algorithms
are appropriate for the regular-compact and regular-sparse
radio maps. They are also safe choices for irregular radio
maps because, even if a great number of fingerprints have
been collected through crowdsourcing, all locations cannot be
guaranteed to have a large enough number of fingerprints.
E. Probabilistic Positioning Algorithm for Radio Maps With
Crowdsourced Fingerprints
In the previous section, the diversity of radio maps was
assumed to be handled by a GIPS with the mapping of radio
maps and positioning algorithms. In reality, however, most of
the existing positioning algorithms are not suitable, especially
for the radio maps constructed with crowdsourced fingerprints.
As a result, the GIPS can hardly be expected to achieve a good
performance on radio maps constructed with crowdsourced fin-
gerprints only by the mapping. In this section, we propose
a new probabilistic positioning algorithm adapted for radio
maps constructed with crowdsourced fingerprints.
The proposed positioning algorithm extends VA in the
framework of the HMM because the VA is a probabilistic
positioning algorithm utilizing historical trajectories of users,
and probabilistic tracking of dynamic movement of users
can be effectively modeled in the HMM [32]. The extended
VA (EVA) can take advantage of the probabilistic framework
for tracking the dynamic movement of a user—even when
only a few samples have been collected at each measure-
ment point—without incorporation of inertial sensors. These
are the common conditions of fingerprints collected from
crowdsourcing.
1) Emission Probability: The modification of the emis-
sion probability calculation of the HMM is the first extension
of the EVA. Traditionally, the emission probability is calcu-
lated for individual AP and location, based on a probabilistic
fingerprint represented as the histogram, Gaussian distribu-
tion, or lognormal distribution. This strategy requires a large
amount of fingerprint samples at each location in order to fully
observe the RSS patterns of the location. Here, we propose
JUNG et al.: METHODS AND TOOLS TO CONSTRUCT GIPS
a new probabilistic fingerprint design called signal fluctuation
matrix (SFM) to mitigate the need for the large amount of fin-
gerprint samples, because not so many samples are assumed
to be available at each location in crowdsourced radio maps.
The method ignores the differences of RSS distribution pat-
terns for each locations and APs, but considers the probability
of fluctuating between two RSS values at a same location. The
universal patterns of the fluctuations are stored in a 2-D matrix
called SFM for each building. Because a fluctuation of a cer-
tain pair of RSS values can be observed from any location and
AP, a reliable SFM can be obtained even if a small number
of samples are available at each location. SFM can be seen as
a universal histogram representing RSS patterns in an indoor
environment.
With the SFM, the probability of observing an online RSS
i of an AP at a location l is calculated as log-odd probability
as follows:
 
P(i, j)
P(i|l) = log (2)
P(i)P( j)
where j is mean RSS of the AP trained at l, P(i|l) is the
observed fluctuation probability of an RSS pair (i, j) stored
in SFM, and P(i)P( j) is the expected fluctuation probabil-
ity of the pair. The emission probability
 P(o|l) of an online
fingerprint o is simply calculated by i∈O P(i|l).
2) Dynamic Transition Probability: The second extension
of the algorithm is the calculation of dynamic transition proba-
bilities. Transition probabilities can be dynamically calculated
based on the moving distance of a user at each time using
inertial sensors [33]. In order to obtain the moving distance
without the incorporation of inertial sensors, we exploit the
fact that the change of user positions is reflected in the change
of Wi-Fi fingerprints. The moving distance indicated by the
signal change can be estimated by the distance between the
positions of two successive online fingerprints.
In the distance estimation, we consider the topology of
routes induced by inner structures including doors, walls and
other barriers in an indoor area. We also consider the k most
probable locations of a fingerprint for a more reliable estima-
tion. Let kLt−1 be the set of the k most probable locations for
an online fingerprint ot−1 given at time t − 1, and kLt be that
for the next fingerprint ot . and kLt be that for the next finger-
print ot . The moving distance dt−1,t of the two fingerprints is
then calculated as the average distance between the pairs of
locations in the two sets
1  
dt−1,t = TD(u, v) (3)
|kLt−1 | · |kLt |
u∈kLt−1 v∈kLt
where TD(u, v) returns the topological distance between two
locations u and v.
Given a distance estimate dt−1,t at time t, a transition prob-
ability P(lj |li ) is extended to P(lj |li , dt−1,t ). This probability
can be computed using PDF under Gaussian assumption if the
standard deviation of estimation errors, σ is given, as follows:
  1 (TD(li ,lj )−dt−1,t )
2
P lj |li , dt−1,t = √ e 2σ 2 . (4)
σ 2π
7
The standard deviation of estimation errors, σ is unknown. In
the implementation, from an arbitrary value, σ was adjusted
based on the accumulated results of the tracking; the difference
between dt−1,t and its corresponding distance in the track-
ing result was considered as the error of the moving distance
estimation.
3) Extension of Viterbi Algorithm: With the extended prob-
ability functions, the standard dynamic programming tech-
nique of VA determines the most probable trajectory of a user
by simply replacing emission and transition probabilities with
the extended ones. Once the most probable trajectory is found,
the end point of the trajectory can be considered as the user
position at current time t.
While the basic tracking considers only a single best tra-
jectory, the best k trajectories are considered by the proposed
algorithm. It estimates the position of a user by averaging the
final locations of the k most probable trajectories. That strat-
egy was known to be effective in decoding a data sequence
observed through a noisy channel [34].
F. Testing and Evaluation
Testing and evaluation should be performed to measure the
positioning accuracy after deploying a positioning system on
the radio maps of a building. Thus a GIPS should be equipped
with methods and tools for evaluation and testing. For exam-
ple, it is helpful to visualize the signal distributions of collected
fingerprints before testing and evaluation. The areas in which
the collection of fingerprints has been incompletely performed
can be easily identified through visualization. This visualiza-
tion is especially important in the GIPS because the collection
activity is usually performed by volunteers who cannot easily
communicate with the developers or operators of the GIPS.
KAILOS visualizes the signal characteristics of collected
fingerprints at location with a heat map as shown in Fig. 2,
step 5. When an area’s set of fingerprints is incomplete,
the collection of fingerprints should be performed again at
the area.
Once the test results are obtained, any faults and errors
should be examined and fixed if possible. For example, floor
detection errors are often detected during testing. A GIPS can
mitigate the floor errors to some extent by using the sensing
data from a pressure sensor. Here, we do not delve into the
details because of space limitations.
IV. KAIST I NDOOR L OCATING S YSTEM
Most of the aforementioned methods, tools, and algo-
rithms have been integrated into an experimental GIPS
named KAILOS [35]. KAILOS supports the entire deploy-
ment process of an indoor positioning system in a building.
KAILOS consists of three parts: 1) KAI-Map; 2) KAI-Pos;
and 3) KAI-Navi. Kai-Map is a set of tools and databases
for indoor and radio maps. KAI-Pos, installed on top of
KAI-Map, is an indoor positioning engine equipped with
several positioning algorithms and techniques to achieve
good positioning accuracy. It provides positioning services
for the buildings whose indoor and radio maps have been
contributed to KAI-Map. KAI-Navi is an indoor/outdoor
8 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SYSTEMS, MAN, AND CYBERNETICS: SYSTEMS
Fig. 6. Architecture of KAILOS.
Fig. 7. Registration of an indoor map and designing survey lines and road
networks.
integrated navigation system. It directs users to the destina-
tions in both indoor and outdoor environments. The following
describes the details of the KAILOS components. Fig. 6 shows
the architecture of KAILOS.
A. KAI-Map
1) KAI-Indoor Map: In Section III, indoor maps were
assumed to be given. In reality, however, most of the indoor
maps of buildings are still unavailable. To address this
problem, KAILOS provides tools and interfaces for the crowd-
sourcing of indoor maps. Fig. 7 shows the schematic of the
contribution process. As shown in the figure, building registra-
tion is the first step of the contribution process. The floor map
registration step follows after the registration of a building.
POIs are registered and specified on the floor map for users
to find or search their destinations. KAILOS supports volun-
teers by providing interfaces to register POIs for the registered
indoor maps.
KAILOS also provides tools to model indoor areas with
road networks, location partitions, and HMMs. Drawing a road
network on an indoor map is essential to support the path
finding process of indoor navigation. An indoor area can addi-
tionally be modeled with location-partitions or a HMM in
KAILOS, if later steps require the models. The modeling of
location-partitions is used to support PMC for planning the
collection points of radio map construction step. If a system
designer is willing to use ULM for radio map construction
or EVA for positioning algorithm, an indoor area should be
modeled as an HMM. KAILOS is equipped with tools to sup-
port location-partitioning and HMM-modeling; the models are
automatically constructed once the walls and the doors are
specified in an indoor map.
2) KAI-Radio Map: KAI-Radio Map is equipped with
methods and tools to support the PMC, walking survey, and
unsupervised-learning based radio map construction methods.
To support the PMC, KAILOS provides tools to plan collec-
tion points on indoor maps and collect Wi-Fi fingerprints on
the planned points. The surveyors are encouraged to collect
10–20 fingerprints on the marked collection points. The match
of the marked collection points and the real collection points
should be confirmed by the collectors themselves during the
collection activity.
KAILOS also supports the walking survey by providing
tools to plan survey lines, collect fingerprints, and calculate
the locations of fingerprints collected along the lines. In the
waking survey, the survey lines should be planned in advance
without the specification of collection points. Only the start
and end points of survey lines are specified to guide the
collectors.
KAILOS also provides tools for the proposed unsupervised
learning-based method. The fingerprints are collected by users
who just walk around all the locations of the floor carrying the
smartphones after installing the collection tool. Then KAILOS
labels the locations of collected fingerprints. The effort of col-
lectors for radio map construction can be drastically reduced
by the unsupervised learning-based method.
3) KAI-Pos: KAI-Pos is an indoor positioning engine
equipped with several positioning algorithms, namely,
kNN [31], Gaussian distribution-based probabilistic
method [29], and EVA, from which it selects an appro-
priate one for the underlying radio map provided from
KAI-Map. It also incorporates various techniques for more
accurate positioning. KAI-Pos adopts an adaptive hybrid filter
to utilize the dynamics of user movements [11], and a map
matching technique to utilize the road network model. The
effect of the filters was apparent when they were applied for
developing indoor positioning systems at the COEX mall, in
2010 [10] and 2014 [35].
Though Wi-Fi signals have been mainly used, KAI-Pos
incorporates other wireless signals and sensing data from var-
ious sensors for more accurate positioning. Bluetooth signals
are often used to cover areas in which Wi-Fi signals are not
available or only weak signals are available. A PDR using
smartphone sensors, such as a three-axis accelerometer and
a gyroscope, has been incorporated to compensate for the
gap incurred by the time interval of consecutive scans [36].
The time interval of consecutive Wi-Fi scans is approximately
1–4 s. The floor detection errors can also be mitigated with
the incorporation of a barometer sensor [37]. Fig. 8 shows the
JUNG et al.: METHODS AND TOOLS TO CONSTRUCT GIPS
Fig. 8. Hybrid architecture of KAILOS positioning system.
architecture of KAI-Pos. In the near future, it will incorporate
the additional signals and sensors in a very tightly coupled
manner using a so-called sensor-fusion technique [36].
4) KAI-Navi: KAI-Navi is an indoor/outdoor integrated
navigation system. It directs users in both indoor and outdoor
environments. KAI-Pos operates indoors, and GPS outdoors,
and the estimated current location is displayed on KAI-Indoor
Map and Google Maps, respectively. Any outdoor navigation
system can be integrated with KAI-Navi if it can provide
open APIs to be connected to. Currently, the SK Telecom
T-map outdoor navigation system, which is the most pop-
ular outdoor navigation system in Korea, is connected with
KAI-Navi. The outdoor paths have been connected to indoor
paths through special points designated as entrances of build-
ings. KAI-Navi, named Campus Atlas in Google Play, was
deployed on KAIST campus, accommodating around 40 four-
to five-story buildings.
V. E VALUATION AND E XAMPLES
A. Performance Evaluation of Radio Map
Construction Methods
Experiments were conducted to evaluate the performance of
the radio map construction methods in the N5 building, and
on the seventh floor, N1 building, KAIST. Four kinds of radio
maps were constructed at the experiment buildings by using
the PMC, walking survey, semisupervised learning, and unsu-
pervised learning methods. A Samsung Galaxy S3 was used
to collect fingerprints with a sampling rate of 1 Hz. A simple
kNN method (k = 3) [31] was used for the localization test
in the evaluation. All programs for the evaluation were imple-
mented in Java and run on a 3.40-GHz Intel Core i7 CPU with
8GB of memory.
Approximately 2000 fingerprints were collected on the sev-
enth floor, N1 building, and approximately 4400 fingerprints
in the N5 building for each method. Fig. 9 shows the eval-
uation results. When 400 fingerprints were collected for the
learnings, the walking survey achieved an accuracy of 1.7 m;
PMC, 2.3 m; semisupervised learning, 4.5 m; and unsuper-
vised learning, 5.3 m. The accuracy gradually improved and
then the improvement was saturated with the increase in the
amount of learning data for all methods. The radio map types
also converted from a sparse, to a dense, and then to a highly
dense radio map with the increment in the number of finger-
prints. When 2000 fingerprints were used, the walking survey
achieved an accuracy of 1.2 m; PMC, 1.7 m; semisupervised
learning, 3.2 m; and unsupervised learning, 3.7 m. The walking
9
Fig. 9. Accuracy evaluation of radio map construction methods. Accuracy
achieved (a) on the seventh floor, N1 building, KAIST and (b) in N5 building,
KAIST.
survey outperformed the PMC in accuracy when the learning
data were collected one or more times at every 1 m. This trend
continues with the increment of the amount of learning data.
This is because the distance between measurement points is
reduced with the increase of learning data point. To collect
2000 fingerprints on the seventh floor, N1 building, the walk-
ing survey must collect fingerprints at every 4 cm, whereas
the PMC was assumed to collect fingerprints at every 3 m
just by varying the number of fingerprints collected at each
measurement point.
Similar results were obtained in the N5 building. When
800 fingerprints were used, the walking survey achieved an
accuracy of 2 m; PMC, 2.5 m; semisupervised learning, 5.5;
and unsupervised learning, 10 m. When 4400 fingerprints were
used, the walking survey achieved an accuracy of 1.5 m; PMC,
2.1 m; semisupervised learning, 2.9 m; and unsupervised
learning, 4.3 m.
Although the semisupervised and unsupervised learning
methods achieved accuracies slightly worse than the manual
calibrations, the results were promising because they were
within the accuracy range that can be used by practical
positioning systems.
B. Performance Evaluation of Proposed Probabilistic
Tracking Algorithm
The evaluation of EVA was conducted on the seventh floor,
N1, KAIST. As three extensions were proposed, the exten-
sions were applied to the basic VA in stages. First, SFM-based
10
TABLE I
S UMMARY OF I NDOOR P OSITIONING S YSTEMS D EVELOPED U SING KAILOS
Fig. 10. Change of positioning accuracies with the increment of the number
of training fingerprint samples at each measure point.
emission probabilities, dynamic transition probabilities, and
their combination were applied to VA, separately; we denote
them by EVA (SFM), EVA (dynamic transition), and EVA,
respectively. Then, the three best results of EVA were used to
evaluate the effect of considering multiple best trajectories on
positioning accuracy; this configuration is denoted by 3-EVA.
Fig. 10 plots the average error distances of the algorithms
with the increment of fingerprint samples at a location. As
shown in the figure, all of the extensions and their combina-
tions were revealed to be effective for accurate positioning.
EVA (SFM) was more effective than VA, especially when
using a few training samples. It provided 15% improved posi-
tioning accuracy against VA when the number of samples was
two at a location, whereas the improvement of using 20 sam-
ples was 10%. Since an SFM was constructed using plenty of
samples from every locations, EVA (SFM) was less sensitive
to the lack of samples.
The improvement made by dynamic transition probabilities
was also significant as shown by EVA (dynamic transition)
in Fig. 10. The strategy of considering multiple trajectories
was also revealed to be effective. The improvements of 3-EVA
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SYSTEMS, MAN, AND CYBERNETICS: SYSTEMS
ranged from 8% to 14% against EVA, and from 21% to 29%
against VA.
The cost of training to label locations of unlabeled finger-
prints is a major hurdle in building a crowdsourcing-based
indoor positioning system. It is closely related to the amount of
data required for the training. Because the proposed position-
ing algorithm can achieve high positioning accuracy even if
only a few training samples are available at a location, it can be
used for practical crowdsourcing-based positioning systems to
reduce the cost of constructing radio maps with crowdsourced
fingerprints.
C. Examples of Using KAILOS
Since the release of KAILOS in the middle of 2014, the
indoor positioning systems for subway stations, indoor shop-
ping malls, and buildings on university campuses have been
developed on KAILOS. Table I is the summary of the areas,
buildings, and stores for which KAILOS has been used.
The indoor positioning and navigation systems of COEX and
KAIST were released integrated with myCoex 3.0 and Campus
Atlas apps in the Google Play store to direct pedestrians to
their destinations. The indoor positioning systems for shop-
ping malls and game rooms on KAILOS were developed to
issue coupons or game items for the promotion of particu-
lar stores, events, and games. The coupons or game items are
notified to users when they are detected at particular areas.
In addition, a company started registering indoor maps and
constructing radio maps of subway stations on KAILOS to
provide an indoor positioning service at subway stations in
Seoul. The indoor and radio maps of five subway stations were
collected along with POIs. The collection activity should be
conducted at as many as 600 subway stations for the com-
plete installation of the subway indoor positioning system in
Seoul. The indoor positioning systems of sea vessels were also
developed on KAILOS for the safety management of crew
members. The working locations of crew members are dis-
played on a monitoring panel in an upper deck control room,
and when someone is working or staying in dangerous working
areas, an alarm is activated on the panel to watch the situation.
JUNG et al.: METHODS AND TOOLS TO CONSTRUCT GIPS
Fig. 11. Bird’s eye view on (a) KAIST Campus, Daejeon, and (b) COEX, Seoul.
Among the examples, we introduce the details of two
examples: 1) KAIST indoor/outdoor integrated campus nav-
igation system deployed at KAIST in 2015 and 2) COEX
indoor positioning and navigation system deployed at the
COEX mall in 2014. In both cases, a walking survey was
used for the collection of fingerprints using the tools pro-
vided by KAILOS. The KAIST campus accommodates around
40 four-, five-, and ten-story buildings in an area of 1 km2
[see Fig. 11(a)]. The fingerprints were collected from these
buildings for the construction the positioning system, mainly
from public spaces, such as corridors, stairways, lobbies, and
classrooms. The outdoor areas near entrances to each building
were included for the collection activity to support seamless
switching between the indoor Wi-Fi and the outdoor GPS
positioning systems.
Before the fingerprint collection activity, user-friendly floor
maps were drawn by a designer for the buildings based on
CAD maps obtained from the campus management office. The
floor maps were then registered to KAILOS via KAI-Indoor
Map, and survey lines were specified along with paths using
the path drawing tool of KAI-Radio Map. The survey lines
were then downloaded along with the maps into collecting
devices for the collection activity. The total length of the sur-
vey lines were approximately 18 km, and it took five days for
five collectors to collect fingerprints along the survey lines.
Because the fingerprint collection was sparse, EVA was cho-
sen for the positioning algorithm of the system. The PoIs, such
as offices, research rooms, and classrooms are also registered
into floor maps via KAI-Indoor Map for navigation services.
The paths for the navigation service were specified for out-
door campus areas as well as indoor areas. Finally, a graph
with around 700 nodes was created for the paths. Fig. 11(a) is
the sketch of the created graph.
11
The path finding routine of KAI-Navi was tested to confirm
if it correctly finds the paths from any source to destinations
after specifying paths on floor maps. KAILOS provides a tool
to visualize the paths specified for testing. Actually the tests
were exhaustively performed using a tool of KAI-Navi, and
some errors were detected by the tests. Most of the errors
were revealed to be originated from the mistakes of path spec-
ification. These problems can be easily addressed by adding
missing paths and modifying already specified paths.
The positioning accuracies of KAI-Pos were evaluated with
the tests data that were collected after the construction of radio
maps. The average error distances of most of the buildings
were around 2–5 m, which were relatively more accurate than
the other cases listed in Table I. This is because most of the
KAIST campus buildings accommodate research rooms that
are filled with abundant Wi-Fi signals. The average error dis-
tances of some buildings such as gymnasiums were over 10 m
because they were either big open space or were not filled with
abundant Wi-Fi signals.
The COEX area comprises Asia’s largest underground shop-
ping mall area, three five-star hotels, one 55-story and one
41-story premier office tower, a big department store, a sub-
way station, a city airport terminal, and other buildings
[see Fig. 11(b)]. The COEX indoor positioning and naviga-
tion system is a good example of the advantage of using
KAILOS. Actually, the first version of the COEX indoor posi-
tioning and navigation system was deployed in 2010 without
the utilization of KAILOS [10]. At that time, PMC was used
to collect 20 fingerprints at each location, and the collection
activity took two weeks for 15 collectors. After the deploy-
ment of the first version, the PMC was repeated once a year
for the maintenance of the system. Note that Wi-Fi fingerprints
are often outdated due to changes in WLAN environments
12
and therefore should be updated for maintaining positioning
accuracy. In fact, we found that usually 30%–40% of APs
was removed, and 30%–50% was newly installed every year
in COEX.
In contrast to the previous deployment, the version deployed
in 2014 was constructed on KAILOS. The KAILOS walking
survey tool was used for the collection of fingerprints, and it
took just a week with five collectors. Note that only one or
two fingerprints are usually collected at each location by the
walking survey, whereas 20 fingerprints were collected by the
PMC for the previous deployment. Although much fewer fin-
gerprints were used in 2014 deployment, no degradation was
observed in the positioning accuracies due to the advanced
positioning algorithm, EVA of KAILOS. On the B1 floor of
the COEX (304 × 652 m in size), an accuracy of approxi-
mately 3–8 m was achieved by the walking survey, which was
a similar level to the results achieved by the PMC in 2010 [10].
The man-month (MM) estimation to deploy an indoor posi-
tioning system in a building could be reduced to a tenth
by using KAILOS. In 2010, approximately 20 MM were
required for the development of the COEX indoor positioning
and navigation system. In contrast, when we used KAILOS
for the deployment in 2014, only two MM were required.
Fingerprint collection, indoor map drawing, POI registration,
indoor area modeling, and survey planning were included
in the MM estimations. The COEX examples confirmed the
benefits of using KAILOS for keeping positioning accuracy
and reducing the time and effort needed to deploy indoor
positioning systems.
VI. D ISCUSSION
It seems that there is no other option but crowdsourcing
to realize a GIPS for the present because a GIPS should
cover every building being filled with Wi-Fi signals all over
the world. This paper raised several technical issues for
implementing a GIPS via crowdsourcing, and then intro-
duced an experimental GIPS system, KAILOS. There are
still many other issues to be further discussed. In this sec-
tion, we discuss other research topics for the construction of
a crowdsourcing-based GIPS.
Typically, crowdsourcing-based systems have to deal with
problems related to the quantity and quality of collected data.
In case of a GIPS, somewhat different problems are raised
depending on the way of collecting data through crowd-
sourcing. In fact, the collection of data for the construction
of a GIPS could be performed either explicitly or implic-
itly. Explicit collection requires explicit efforts of users for
location-labeling or indoor map uploading, which are not
required for implicit collection.
One of main issues to be addressed for the explicit collec-
tion is the reliability of collected data. For example, PMC or
a walking survey can be used for an explicit collection, but
the participants may assign incorrect location information for
signal measurements by mistake. To reduce the influence of
errors included in the contributions, a clustering-based filtering
method can be used for the checking of location labeling of
the data collected from numerous users [38]. The correct RSS
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SYSTEMS, MAN, AND CYBERNETICS: SYSTEMS
measurements usually form a cluster at each labeled location,
whereas incorrectly labeled inputs will not be included in the
cluster, and they usually remain as outliers.
Unlike the explicit collection, the reliability problem is
not a main issue for the implicit collection because location
information is not manually labeled by participants. Instead,
the implicit collection usually suffers from high computa-
tional cost and lack of data problems. The implicit collection
collects signal measurements without location information
during the normal operation of wireless devices. Therefore,
the problem of assigning correct locations to crowdsourced
fingerprints should be addressed. A complex methodology,
such as semisupervised learning or unsupervised learning, is
required to address this problem. These methodologies usually
require a significant computational cost for their optimiza-
tion task [14], [21]. Moreover, they are more sensitive to the
lack of data than a manual labeling method as illustrated in
Fig. 9. As the studies on the implicit collections have not
been matured yet, more in-depth studies should be conducted
to address computational cost and lack of data issues.
Meanwhile, device heterogeneity has long been an issue
in Wi-Fi fingerprinting. The differences in Wi-Fi chipsets
and antenna designs cause different signal measurements even
at the same location, resulting in considerable positioning
errors. The problem could be more critical in crowdsourced
fingerprints because diverse devices were to be involved in
crowdsourcing [3]. To mitigate this problem, several studies
have used the differences between RSS values as a loca-
tion fingerprint instead of the value itself [39]–[41]. Another
typical solution for the problem is to use a linear transfor-
mation to calibrate the RSS variations among devices [42].
KAILOS adopted this strategy; pre-examined transforma-
tion functions for nine popular smartphone models were
used for the crowdsourcing of fingerprints and positioning
services.
The maintenance and update of radio maps are nagging
issues in Wi-Fi fingerprint-based positioning. Radio maps are
outdated over time due to the changes of WLAN environ-
ments, such as addition, removal, and relocation of APs, as
we have reported with the COEX case in Section V-C. To
address this problem, several researches have been conducted
focusing on the update of radio maps in accordance with the
changes of WLAN environments. Crowdsourcing paradigm
could be effectively used for the update of radio maps because
fingerprints are supposed to be continuously collected from
the ever changing environments. Semisupervised learning-
or unsupervised learning-based methods can simply repeat
their learning tasks for newly-crowdsourced data. The semisu-
pervised learning-based methods can take a more efficient
strategy; if a previously learned radio map is used as the initial
point of the new learning for the radio map update, the need
for a set of new labeled data could be obviated. Unsupervised
learning-based method also can be modified to enhance the
efficiency of radio map updates by using incremental learning
paradigm [40]. In KAILOS, we extended the proposed unsu-
pervised learning algorithm, ULM, adopting an incremental
learning method for regular updates of previously constructed
radio maps.
JUNG et al.: METHODS AND TOOLS TO CONSTRUCT GIPS
VII. C ONCLUSION
Wi-Fi zones are still expanding, and the density of Wi-
Fi signals is ever increasing globally. Despite the hurdles in
implementing GIPS utilizing Wi-Fi signals, the Wi-Fi signals
will be mainly used for the GIPS because of already-available
Wi-Fi infrastructures.
This paper presents the essential methods and tools to
develop a GIPS by using Wi-Fi signals. An unsupervised
learning based fingerprint labeling technique was developed
to construct radio maps by using crowdsourced fingerprints.
It allows us to build the radio maps for most of the buildings
in cities and villages at a very low cost. The practical prob-
abilistic positioning algorithm turned out to be applicable for
crowdsourced radio maps because it showed relatively good
performance on the radio maps with randomly and sparsely
collected fingerprints. Finally, the idea of mapping radio maps
into positioning algorithms for positioning systems will allow
the GIPS to accommodate new positioning algorithms.
However, the techniques are applicable only for buildings
whose indoor maps are available. Since the indoor maps of
most of the building are currently unavailable, it will take
some time until we have a complete GIPS. If the radio maps
can be constructed for the buildings without indoor maps, we
can shorten the time to realize the GIPS. Now, we are planning
to develop crowdsourcing radio map construction techniques
for the buildings without indoor maps.
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Suk-Hoon Jung received the Ph.D. degree in
information and communications engineering from
the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and
Technology (KAIST), Daejeon, South Korea.
He is a Researcher of Computer Science with
KAIST. His current research interests include net-
work analytics, machine learning, and their applica-
tions to pervasive computing.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SYSTEMS, MAN, AND CYBERNETICS: SYSTEMS
Gunwoo Lee received the M.S. degree in com-
puter science and engineering from Chung-Ang
University, Seoul, South Korea. He is currently
pursuing the Ph.D. degree in computer science
with the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and
Technology, Daejeon, South Korea.
His research interests include computer networks,
indoor positioning, machine learning, and their
applications to pervasive computing.
Dongsoo Han (M’13) received the Ph.D. degree in
information science from Kyoto University, Kyoto,
Japan.
He is a Professor of Computer Science with
the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and
Technology, Daejeon, South Korea. His cur-
rent research interests include indoor positioning,
pervasive computing, and location-based mobile
applications.