PerfLoc: Performance Evaluation of Smartphone Indoor Localization Apps

 It is no longer possible for app developers to upload the location estimates generated by their apps at the PerfLoc website for performance evaluation purposes and to get statistics of localization accuracy. However, the PerfLoc data is still useful, because there is training data with ground-truth location annotation that would be useful to anyone wishing to develop indoor localization apps and getting an idea of the performance of their apps.

The data is composed of:

1. RF signal strengths measured from Wi-Fi access points in range
2. RF signal strengths measured from cellular towers (base stations) in range
3. Built-in environmental, position and motion sensors
4. Detected geophysical position using the Global Positioning System (GPS)
5. Timestamps at certain test points (dots) in the buildings with known x,y,z coordinates
6. Metadata involving the features of the device that was used to collect a data set corresponding to a particular Test & Evaluation (T&E) Scenario and the air pressure value at the beginning of the scenario, whenever applicable.
7. Building-specific information comprising the coordinates of the corners of each building, the coordinates of Wi-Fi access points (APs) deployed in the building, and the coordinates of the training dots in that building
8. Definitions of protocol buffers; see the end of this section for more information on this item.

The data was collected using four different smartphones, in four buildings with different characteristics. The total space covered by these buildings was about 30,000 m2. One was an office building, two were industrial shop and warehouse types of buildings, and the fourth was a subterranean structure. More than 900 dots were used to mark locations of interest that covered all the spaces in all four buildings. A total of 34 T&E scenarios were used for data collection in the four buildings. Time instances were recorded in each scenario when certain dots were visited. The dots visited in each scenario were a subset of the dots deployed in the given building, and the subsets varied from one scenario to another within the same building. The T&E scenarios are defined in the ISO/IEC 18305 standard.