Journal of Network and Computer Applications 52(2015)79-89 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Network and Computer Applications ELSEVIER journal homepage:www.elsevier.com/locate/jnca CrowdSensing:A crowd-sourcing based indoor navigation rossMark using RFID-based delay tolerant network Hao Ji,Lei Xie*,Chuyu Wang,Yafeng Yin,Sanglu Lu State Key Laboratory for Novel Software Technology.Nanjing University.Nanjing.China ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Article history: As a supporting technology for most pervasive applications,indoor localization and navigation has Received 20 April 2014 attracted extensive attention in recent years.Conventional solutions mainly leverage techniques like Received in revised form WiFi and cellular network to effectively locate the user for indoor localization and navigation.In this 17 November 2014 Accepted 16 February 2015 paper.we investigate the problem of indoor navigation by using the RFID-based delay tolerant network. Available online 12 March 2015 Different from the previous work,we aim to efficiently locate and navigate to a specified mobile user who is continuously moving within the indoor environment.As the low-cost RFID tags are widely Keywords: deployed inside the indoor environment and acting as landmarks,the mobile users can actively Indoor localization interrogate the surrounding tags with devices like smart phones and leave messages or traces to the Indoor navigation tags.These messages or traces can be carried and forwarded to more tags by other mobile users.In this REID Delay-tolerant network way.the RFID-based infrastructure forms a delay tolerant network.By using the crowd-sourcing Crowd-sourcing technology in RFID-based delay tolerant network,we respectively propose a framework,namely CrowdSensing.to schedule the tasks and manage the resources in the network.We further propose a navigation algorithm to locate and navigate to the moving target.We verify the performance of proposed framework and navigation algorithm on mobility model built on real-world human traceset.Experiment results show that our solution can efficiently reduce the average searching time for indoor navigation. 2015 Elsevier Ltd.All rights reserved. 1.Introduction indoor environment and act as landmarks for localization.Since current smart phones can be equipped with near field communica- As the rapid proliferation of pervasive applications in indoor tion (NFC)or bluetooth modules,which can effectively commu- environment,a lot of location-based services and context-aware nicate with the active/passive tags,the mobile users can actively services are put forward in which location is viewed as one of the interrogate the surrounding tags with tiny devices like smart most significant factors.For most applications,it is required to phones and leave messages or traces to the tags.In this way,the provide an accurate location for the specified objects.However,the RFID-based infrastructure forms a delay tolerant network.As the current mature technology like global position system(GPS)can only scanning range of RFID system is usually no more than 5 m.the be used in the outdoor environment for localization,several issues system can effectively locate the users by limiting the positioning like the multi-path effect and severe path loss make the indoor error to at most 5 m. localization a lot more complicated than the outdoor situation. In conventional indoor applications,the users are continuously Therefore,a lot of research works have focused on localization and moving within the indoor environment.Then,one important navigation schemes for indoor environment (Priyantha et al.,2001: problem is how to locate and navigate to a specified mobile user. Minami et al.,2004:Fischer et al,2004:Azizyan et al.,2009:Biswas For example,when a baby or a dog is lost in a shopping mall,how and Veloso,2010:Jiang et al,2011.2012).Most of the solutions are to quickly locate and navigate to the mobile target?Obviously,the rather complicated and fairly expensive. mobile target can only passively leave some traces in the environ- Recent technological advances have enabled the development ment through the equipped NFC or bluetooth modules.It cannot of low-cost and low-powered devices(Xie et al,2010,2013).RFID, actively propagate its current position directly to the searchers. as a novel technology for automatic identification,provides us Besides,time-efficiency is very critical to the searchers,since the with a new opportunity for indoor localization and navigation.For less time to use,the more opportunities to find the target. example,the low-cost RFID tags can be widely deployed inside the Therefore,it is essential to devise a time-efficient navigation scheme by using the RFID-based delay tolerant network.In this paper,we first propose a framework to schedule the tasks and .Corresponding author. manage the resources in this network.Furthermore,we propose a E-mail address:Ixie@nju.edu.cn (L Xie). navigation algorithm to locate and navigate to the moving target. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/jjnca.2015.02.010 1084-8045/2015 Elsevier Ltd.All rights reserved.CrowdSensing: A crowd-sourcing based indoor navigation using RFID-based delay tolerant network Hao Ji, Lei Xie n , Chuyu Wang, Yafeng Yin, Sanglu Lu State Key Laboratory for Novel Software Technology, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China article info Article history: Received 20 April 2014 Received in revised form 17 November 2014 Accepted 16 February 2015 Available online 12 March 2015 Keywords: Indoor localization Indoor navigation RFID Delay-tolerant network Crowd-sourcing abstract As a supporting technology for most pervasive applications, indoor localization and navigation has attracted extensive attention in recent years. Conventional solutions mainly leverage techniques like WiFi and cellular network to effectively locate the user for indoor localization and navigation. In this paper, we investigate the problem of indoor navigation by using the RFID-based delay tolerant network. Different from the previous work, we aim to efficiently locate and navigate to a specified mobile user who is continuously moving within the indoor environment. As the low-cost RFID tags are widely deployed inside the indoor environment and acting as landmarks, the mobile users can actively interrogate the surrounding tags with devices like smart phones and leave messages or traces to the tags. These messages or traces can be carried and forwarded to more tags by other mobile users. In this way, the RFID-based infrastructure forms a delay tolerant network. By using the crowd-sourcing technology in RFID-based delay tolerant network, we respectively propose a framework, namely CrowdSensing, to schedule the tasks and manage the resources in the network. We further propose a navigation algorithm to locate and navigate to the moving target. We verify the performance of proposed framework and navigation algorithm on mobility model built on real-world human traceset. Experiment results show that our solution can efficiently reduce the average searching time for indoor navigation. & 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction As the rapid proliferation of pervasive applications in indoor environment, a lot of location-based services and context-aware services are put forward in which location is viewed as one of the most significant factors. For most applications, it is required to provide an accurate location for the specified objects. However, the current mature technology like global position system (GPS) can only be used in the outdoor environment for localization, several issues like the multi-path effect and severe path loss make the indoor localization a lot more complicated than the outdoor situation. Therefore, a lot of research works have focused on localization and navigation schemes for indoor environment (Priyantha et al., 2001; Minami et al., 2004; Fischer et al., 2004; Azizyan et al., 2009; Biswas and Veloso, 2010; Jiang et al., 2011, 2012). Most of the solutions are rather complicated and fairly expensive. Recent technological advances have enabled the development of low-cost and low-powered devices (Xie et al., 2010, 2013). RFID, as a novel technology for automatic identification, provides us with a new opportunity for indoor localization and navigation. For example, the low-cost RFID tags can be widely deployed inside the indoor environment and act as landmarks for localization. Since current smart phones can be equipped with near field communica￾tion (NFC) or bluetooth modules, which can effectively commu￾nicate with the active/passive tags, the mobile users can actively interrogate the surrounding tags with tiny devices like smart phones and leave messages or traces to the tags. In this way, the RFID-based infrastructure forms a delay tolerant network. As the scanning range of RFID system is usually no more than 5 m, the system can effectively locate the users by limiting the positioning error to at most 5 m. In conventional indoor applications, the users are continuously moving within the indoor environment. Then, one important problem is how to locate and navigate to a specified mobile user. For example, when a baby or a dog is lost in a shopping mall, how to quickly locate and navigate to the mobile target? Obviously, the mobile target can only passively leave some traces in the environ￾ment through the equipped NFC or bluetooth modules. It cannot actively propagate its current position directly to the searchers. Besides, time-efficiency is very critical to the searchers, since the less time to use, the more opportunities to find the target. Therefore, it is essential to devise a time-efficient navigation scheme by using the RFID-based delay tolerant network. In this paper, we first propose a framework to schedule the tasks and manage the resources in this network. Furthermore, we propose a navigation algorithm to locate and navigate to the moving target. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jnca Journal of Network and Computer Applications http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jnca.2015.02.010 1084-8045/& 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. n Corresponding author. E-mail address: lxie@nju.edu.cn (L. Xie). Journal of Network and Computer Applications 52 (2015) 79–89