Distances for wifi based topological indoor mapping

Bastian Schäfermeier, Tom Hanika, Gerd Stumme

Abstract: For localization and mapping of indoor environments through WiFi signals, locations are often represented as likelihoods of the received signal strength indicator. Different measures are proposed in the literature for determining the similarity of these likelihoods. They are usually evaluated in studies with specific settings. In this work we compare, in a daily-life setting, various measures of distance between such likelihoods in combination with different methods for estimation and representation. In particular, we show that among the considered distance measures the Earth Mover's Distance is the most beneficial for the localization task.