SELoc: Collect Your Location Data Using Only a Barometer Sensor

Haibo Ye, Li Sheng, Tao Gu, Zhiqiu Huang

Abstract: This paper presents the design and implementation of a location data collecting system only using the barometer sensor on the smartphone. It is energy efficient because of using low-power barometer sensor readings to infer the location, and it protects user privacy by providing the non-sensitive location data. To design such a location data collecting system, we make some key technical contributions: 1) a curve fitting-based solution to remove the barometer sensor reading noise caused by weather change; 2) a deep learning algorithm to detect user moving activities based on the restricted Boltzmann machine, and; 3) a clustering-based extraction algorithm for signatures of different locations. The field studies show that the SELoc provides user daily locations with an accuracy of 85%; meanwhile, the average energy consumption is only about 22% compared with GPS.