KR102177652B1 - Method for controlling access point (ap) which provides location information signal - Google Patents

Abstract

The present invention relates to a control method of an access point (hereinafter referred to as an AP") that relays a wireless LAN signal, and more particularly, to a control method for updating location information of an AP providing a location information signal.
Specifically, in the present invention, in transmitting information on the location where it is installed, even if the installed location is changed, the AP detects it by itself and updates its location information set inside according to the changed installation location or as a user. It was to control the update.
In this way, the reliability of the location information transmitted by the AP can be maximized, and as a result, the quality of the location identification service using the Wi-Fi signal transmitted by the AP can be improved.

Description

Control method of access point (AP) providing location information signal {METHOD FOR CONTROLLING ACCESS POINT (AP) WHICH PROVIDES LOCATION INFORMATION SIGNAL}

The present invention relates to a control method of an access point (hereinafter, referred to as “AP”) that relays a wireless LAN signal, and more particularly, to a control method for updating location information of an AP that provides a location information signal.

The position estimation method using the GPS (Global Positioning System) is used in various technical fields and application fields, but the accuracy of the signal received from the satellite is low depending on the location, so its utilization is limited. In particular, since GPS signals cannot be received indoors, there is a limit to the application of the indoor location information providing service that has recently been in the spotlight.

Recently, with the rapid expansion of wireless LAN infrastructure, a service that allows location recognition by using a Wi-Fi signal, which is a transmission signal of a wireless LAN AP, has appeared without using a GPS signal for location recognition. That is, in the location recognition service using a Wi-Fi signal, a service provider acquires a Wi-Fi fingerprint based on a Wi-Fi signal transmitted from a fixedly installed wireless LAN AP indoors or outdoors, and uses the obtained Wi-Fi fingerprint. If the location-aware service environment is provided by establishing a Wi-Fi Radio Map database (DB) by linking the coordinates of the corresponding point, the service subscriber receives a Wi-Fi signal at a certain point. It refers to the Wi-Fi Radio Map database so that the location of the corresponding point can be known.

In order to provide a location-aware service using such a Wi-Fi signal, the most important issue is how to build a reliable Wi-Fi signal map.

As a prior art for constructing a Wi-Fi signal map, Skyhook's construction technology is known, which collects a pair of Wi-Fi fingerprints and GPS signals containing AP specific information through war driving. After that, the AP location is inferred using the accumulated information, a Wi-Fi signal map is constructed based on the inferred location information of the AP, and used for location recognition service. Known as'WPS', this method is costly and time consuming and has an average error distance of about 40 meters, which has the disadvantage of not being very accurate. In addition, since it moves to a vehicle and collects the Wi-Fi fingerprint of the AP, there is a clear limitation in collecting the Wi-Fi fingerprint of the AP installed indoors.

In addition, various technologies for collecting Wi-Fi signals, estimating at which point this Wi-Fi signal is transmitted, and combining the estimated location data to build a reliable Wi-Fi signal map DB (Korean patent 10-1091804, Korean Patent No. 10-1144016, etc.) have been proposed, but it requires enormous time and resource investment to estimate the location of a Wi-Fi signal transmitted from a specific point and provide location information. There is a problem that its accuracy is poor.

Techniques presented in a simple way to give accurate location information to a Wi-Fi signal are techniques disclosed in US patents 2009-0085806, 2009-0088182, and 2009-0088138 (hereinafter, RICHO patent). The gist of the technology disclosed in the RICHO patent is a method in which when an AP transmits a Wi-Fi signal, it includes the location information data on which the AP is installed and transmits it. That is, when coded location information data is inserted and transmitted in the SSID area of the broadcast Wi-Fi signal format, all nearby terminals receiving this Wi-Fi signal refer to the location information data inserted in the SSID area. Soon you will be able to find out where you are. In this case, a separate Wi-Fi signal map DB is built by estimating the location of the Wi-Fi signal and adding information according to the estimated location for each Wi-Fi signal, as in the war driving method or other conventional methods. The hassle and tremendous cost that must be done can be drastically reduced.

However, in order to commercialize the RICOH patented technology having such a good advantage, when all APs transmit a Wi-Fi signal, the location information inserted in the signal must always maintain accuracy.

APs installed indoors and outdoors can be largely classified into APs installed by communication service providers, APs installed by general companies or stores, and APs installed in private homes. In order for the AP to transmit the Wi-Fi signal with the location information inserted, it is necessary to input and set the location information of the place installed by the operator when the AP is initially installed. As a result, the AP transmits a Wi-Fi signal including the location information of its installed location immediately after installation. APs installed by telecommunications carriers do not change their location once they are installed, so there is no need to update or change the location information input to the AP. However, in the case of APs installed in companies, stores, and private homes, location movement occurs due to migration. Move to a new location The installed AP needs to newly change the location information data recorded inside. In the case of a private home or store AP, if the owner does not pay special attention, the location information of the previously installed location is saved even if the installation location has changed. The case of transmitting included Wi-Fi signals frequently occurs. This means that when an arbitrary terminal owner receives a Wi-Fi signal at a specific point, different location information is displayed for each received Wi-Fi signal, and thus a problem of not determining which location information is correct may occur.

Therefore, even in the case of the RICHO patent, there is a problem in that the reliability of the service cannot be guaranteed unless the location information input to the APs is updated and changed in a timely manner reflecting the movement of the APs.

Therefore, the present invention conceived to solve the problems of the prior art, in an AP that transmits information on a location where it is installed on a Wi-Fi signal, when the installation location is changed, it is It is an object of the present invention to provide an AP control method in which the location information recorded in is updated by itself or the user induces to update the location information.

In order to achieve the above object, the present invention includes the steps of controlling to operate in a Wi-Fi signal reception mode when a predetermined period arrives; Extracting location information by receiving a Wi-FI signal transmitted from an external AP in the reception mode; Checking whether the location information recorded therein indicates a point close to the received location information; And correcting the location information recorded therein with the received location information or outputting a warning message if the check result does not indicate a nearby point.

The present invention can maximize the reliability of the location information transmitted by the AP by detecting the AP itself even if the installation location of the AP is changed and updating its own location information set inside according to the changed installation location or by allowing the user to update it. In addition, this has the effect of best improving the quality of a location service using a Wi-Fi signal transmitted from the AP.

1 is a diagram illustrating an exemplary format configuration of a broadcasting signal (BEACON) of an AP transmitting location information together
2 is a flowchart of an AP control method according to the present invention.

1 is a diagram illustrating an exemplary format configuration of a broadcasting signal (BEACON) of an AP for transmitting location information together.

The beacon signal 10 broadcast by the AP is a common framehead 11, a beacon interval 12, a timestamp 13, a user-set identifier (SSID) 14, a support rate field 15, and a parameter set field. (16), a function information field 17, a traffic instruction map 18, and a CRC field 19 are included. In general, the frame of the beacon signal 10 has a length of about 50 bytes.

In the case of the RICOH patent, a user setting identifier 14 (hereinafter, SSID) field of the beacon signal frame is used so that the AP transmits location information. SSID 14 is typically a user definable ASCII (ASCII) character. When installing the AP, the user has the authority to set the value of the SSID 14. Therefore, in the case of an AP for transmitting location information (RICOH patent), the location information was encoded as a code and inserted as part of the SSID 14 as shown in FIG. 1. That is, 2 characters representing the height, 1 character (FC) encoding the multiplier value, 4 characters representing the latitude value, and 4 characters representing the longitude value are SSID( 14). The case shown in FIG. 1 is an example, and in addition, the installed place may be inserted into a zip code and a number indicating the building and the number of buildings. A code system that can be easily input and modified by the user installing the AP would be most desirable.

2 is a flowchart illustrating a method of controlling an AP according to the present invention.

In the present invention, when the AP is initially installed, the installation operator or the user can input and set the location information in the SSID 14, and even after the installation location change, the user menu is provided to modify the initially set location information. It is assumed to be driven.

In the control method according to the present invention, the AP is set to operate in a mode in which a neighboring Wi-Fi signal is received every preset period during normal operation. When entering the reception mode (21), all the Wi-Fi signals in the vicinity are received and location information contained in the signals is extracted (22, 23). Then, the extracted location information is compared with each other, and only information matching up to a certain level is selected as valid information (24). In other words, if you receive the surrounding Wi-Fi signal and read the location information contained in each signal, you can find out the location information contained in the location to a certain level, and when it is the case as shown in <Table 1> below, signal 4 It can be seen that the location information included in is different from the location information of the other three signals, and in this case, the location information of the AP that transmitted signal 4 is determined to be inaccurate and not updated, and is excluded from the valid signal. .

Location information Signal 1 xxx-city, yyy-avenue, a-1 Signal 2 xxx-city, yyy-avenue, a-2 Signal 3 xxx-city, yyy-avenue, b-1 Signal 4 eee-city, fff-avenue, zzz

The location information determined to be valid is selected based on the above criteria, and it is checked whether the location information and the location information set for itself indicate points close to each other (25, 26). It is desirable to set the condition in advance to determine to what extent the nearest point should be matched. In general, if the city name and the street name match, determining that the nearest point is indicated may be one method.

Anyway, if the location information of the signal selected as having valid location information among the Wi-Fi signals received from nearby APs and the location information recorded inside indicate the nearest point, the location information currently recorded inside Is determined to be in a state that does not require modification, and returns to the state for performing the original operation. However, if the adjacent point is not indicated, the location information recorded inside is determined to be incorrect and performs a function to correct it. In other words, the location information value determined to be valid as location information of the Wi-Fi signal received from the surrounding area is updated with its own location information, and a correction operation is performed and returned, or a warning message requesting the user to modify the location information is output. (27) Transition to the standby state where normal operation is not performed.

Here, in the case of automatically correcting the own location information with the location information in the received surrounding Wi-Fi signal, the Wi-Fi signal having the largest RSSI value by referring to the received signal strength indication (RSSI) value of the received signals Select a location information value and modify the location information in the same way as that value. This is because the AP that transmitted the Wi-Fi signal with the largest RSSI value can be estimated to be located in the nearest location to itself.

Even if the AP automatically corrects its location information by referring to the location information contained in the surrounding Wi-Fi signal, it is of course possible to keep it in a standby state that does not perform normal operation while outputting a warning message to the user. Do.

The method of outputting the warning message to the user is to have the AP drive program installed in the PC output the warning message when the PC is turned on by continuously sending the warning message data to the PC connection port, since the AP is normally connected to the PC. desirable.

Accordingly, the reliability of a location identification service using APs that transmit location information can be greatly improved by the AP control method.

The present invention is applicable to a system for recognizing a location using a Wi-Fi signal, which is a transmission signal of an AP.

Claims (4)

In the control method of the AP that transmits including location information,
Operating in a Wi-Fi signal reception mode when a predetermined period arrives;
Extracting location information by receiving a Wi-FI signal transmitted from an external AP in the reception mode;
Checking whether the received location information and the location information recorded therein indicate a point close to each other;
Determining that the location information currently recorded therein does not need to be corrected when the check result indicates the nearest point, and returning to a state for performing an original operation;
If the check result does not indicate the nearest point, correcting the location information recorded inside with the received location information value or outputting a warning message
AP control method comprising a. The method according to claim 1,
After performing the step of extracting the location information, the method further comprises a selection step of comparing the extracted location information with each other to exclude invalid location information values. The method according to claim 1 or 2,
The modification of the location information recorded therein is performed by modifying the location information value included in the signal having the highest RSSI of the received location information. The method according to claim 1 or 2,
The output of the warning message is an AP control method, characterized in that the output is continuously output while maintaining a standby state in which normal operation is suspended until the location information recorded therein is modified by a user.

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