Innovative methodologies for the wireless localization of users and related applications
are addressed in this thesis.
In last years, the widespread diffusion of pervasive wireless communication
(e.g., Wi-Fi) and global localization services (e.g., GPS) has boosted the interest
and the research on location information and services. Location-aware
applications are becoming fundamental to a growing number of consumers (e.g.,
navigation, advertising, seamless user interaction with smart places), private and
public institutions in the fields of energy efficiency, security, safety,
fleet management, emergency response. In this context, the position of the user - where
is often more valuable for deploying services of interest than the identity of the
user itself - who.
In detail, opportunistic approaches based on the analysis of electromagnetic
field indicators (i.e., received signal strength and channel state information) for
the presence detection, the localization, the tracking and the posture recognition
of cooperative and non-cooperative (device-free) users in indoor environments are
proposed and validated in real world test sites. The methodologies are designed
to exploit existing wireless infrastructures and commodity devices without any
hardware modification.
In outdoor environments, global positioning technologies are already available
in commodity devices and vehicles, the research and knowledge transfer
activities are actually focused on the design and validation of algorithms and
systems devoted to support decision makers and operators for increasing efficiency,
operations security, and management of large fleets as well as localized
sensed information in order to gain situation awareness. In this field, a decision
support system for emergency response and Civil Defense assets management
(i.e., personnel and vehicles equipped with TETRA mobile radio) is described in
terms of architecture and results of two-years of experimental validation