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The Horus location determination system

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Abstract

We present the design and implementation of the Horus WLAN location determination system. The design of the Horus system aims at satisfying two goals: high accuracy and low computational requirements. The Horus system identifies different causes for the wireless channel variations and addresses them to achieve its high accuracy. It uses location-clustering techniques to reduce the computational requirements of the algorithm. The lightweight Horus algorithm helps in supporting a larger number of users by running the algorithm at the clients.

We discuss the different components of the Horus system and evaluate its performance on two testbeds. Our results show that the Horus system achieves its goal. It has an error of less than 0.6 meter on the average and its computational requirements are more than an order of magnitude better than other WLAN location determination systems. Moreover, the techniques developed in the context of the Horus system are general and can be applied to other WLAN location determination systems to enhance their accuracy. We also report lessons learned from experimenting with the Horus system and provide directions for future work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 20742, USA

    Moustafa Youssef

  2. Alexandria University, Egypt

    Ashok Agrawala

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  1. Moustafa Youssef
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  2. Ashok Agrawala
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Correspondence to Moustafa Youssef.

Additional information

Moustafa Youssef is a research associate in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Maryland at College Park. He received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Computer Science from Alexandria University, Egypt in 1997 and 1999 respectively and the Ph.D. degree in computer science from University of Maryland in 2004. His research interests include location determination technologies, pervasive computing, energy-aware computing, sensor networks, and protocol modeling. Dr. Moustafa is a life fellow for the Egyptian Society for Talented, an elected member of the honor society Phi Kappa Phi, among others. He is a member of various professional societies such as IEEE, IEEE Computer Society, IEEE Communication Society and ACM Sigmobile. Dr. Moustafa is the recipient of the 2003 University of Maryland Invention of the Year award for his Horus work.

Ashok K. Agrawala is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Maryland. In 2001, he started the Maryland Information and Network Dynamics (MIND) Lab for which carries out research and development activities in partnership with the industry. He received his B.E. degree in 1963 and an M.E. degree in 1965 from the I.I.Sc., Bangalore; and a Master of Arts and his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from Harvard University in 1970. Prof. Agrawala is the author of seven books, six patents (awarded or pending), and over 240 papers and is a recognized authority in the research and use of time management in real-time processing and clock synchronization applications. He has developed a few location determination techniques and several other innovative technologies for systems and networks, which are in different stages of development. Prof. Agrawala is a fellow of the IEEE and senior member of the ACM.

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Youssef, M., Agrawala, A. The Horus location determination system. Wireless Netw 14, 357–374 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11276-006-0725-7

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