[OPLIN 4cast] OPLIN 4cast #484: Locating Wi-Fi users

[OPLIN Support]

Email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser.
<http://www.oplin.org/4cast/>
[image: OPLIN 4Cast]

OPLIN 4cast #484: Locating Wi-Fi users
April 6th, 2016

[image: Wi-Fi signal] It's possible that just about every library in Ohio
has had people sitting outside the library using their Wi-Fi when the
library is closed. That happens so often, in fact, that administrators of
the E-rate program call this "ancillary" use and consider it normal. Most
libraries don't seem to mind, but in some cases, a library may have a
branch in a mall or otherwise in close proximity to other businesses and
want to limit Wi-Fi use to actual library users. For those cases, MIT
research announced last week may promise a solution.

   - Wireless tech means safer drones, smarter homes and password-free WiFi
   <http://news.mit.edu/2016/wireless-tech-means-safer-drones-smarter-homes-password-free-wifi-0331>
   (MIT News | Adam Conner-Simons) "In a new paper, a research team led by
   Professor Dina Katabi present a system called Chronos that enables a single
   WiFi access point to locate users to within tens of centimeters, without
   any external sensors. The group demonstrated Chronos in an apartment and a
   cafe, while also showing off a drone that maintains a safe distance from
   its user with a margin of error of about four centimeters."
   - MIT's wireless localizer could mean password-free Wi-Fi
   <http://www.pcmag.com/news/343395/mits-wireless-localizer-could-mean-password-free-wi-fi>
   (PC Magazine | Angela Moscaritolo) "Existing localization methods determine
   someone's position by 'triangulating multiple angles relative to the
   person,' a process that requires multiple Wi-Fi access points. Chronos, on
   the other hand, can calculate not just the angle, but the distance from a
   user [to] an access point. 'Knowing both the distance and the angle allows
   you to compute the user's position using just one access point,' PhD
   student Deepak Vasisht, who helped author a paper about the new technology,
   said in a statement."
   - New wireless tech from MIT promises password-free Wi-Fi
   <http://www.pcworld.com/article/3050318/networking/new-wireless-tech-from-mit-promises-password-free-wi-fi.html>
   (PC World | Katherine Noyes) "Making it all possible was Vasisht's
   observation that signals travel over the air from transmitter to receiver
   at a different frequency than they do within a Wi-Fi device during the
   process of being detected, said Dina Katabi, an MIT professor who led the
   research team, in an interview on Tuesday. After coming up with an
   algorithm to exploit that fact, the researchers tested the technology in a
   two-bedroom apartment with four occupants and found that Chronos can
   correctly identify which room a resident is in 94 percent of the time. In a
   cafe, it was 97 percent accurate in distinguishing in-store customers from
   out-of-store intruders, meaning that passwords could be eliminated."
   - MIT turns Wi-Fi into indoor GPS
   <http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/wireless/mit-turns-wifi-into-indoor-gps>
   (IEEE Spectrum | Mark Harris) "There are some limitations, however.
   Although Chronos can run on existing Wi-Fi devices using just an app (or a
   firmware upgrade for an access point), each device has to undergo a
   one-time distance calibration. And because Chronos takes around one-tenth
   of a second to sweep all the Wi-Fi bands, its accuracy plunges if the
   devices are moving relative to one another during this initial setup."

*Articles from Ohio Web Library <http://ohioweblibrary.org>:*

   - Coming to a store near you.
   <http://search.ebscohost.com.proxy.oplin.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db=buh&AN=111883318>
   (*GPS World*, Dec. 2015, p.14)
   - Probabilistic radio-frequency fingerprinting and localization on the
   run.
   <http://search.ebscohost.com.proxy.oplin.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db=cph&AN=94648522>
   (*Bell Labs Technical Journal*, March 2014, p.111-133 | Piotr Mirowski,
   Dimitrios Milioris, Philip Whiting, and Tin Kam Ho)
   - Finding a person with a Wi-Fi device in a crowd of pedestrians.
   <http://search.ebscohost.com.proxy.oplin.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=94723348>
   (*Advanced Robotics*, April 2014, p.441-448 | Masahiro Shiomi, Kaoru
   Kurumizawa, Takayuki Kanda, Hiroshi Ishiguro, and Norihiro Hagita)

------------------------------
The *OPLIN 4cast* is a weekly compilation of recent headlines, topics, and
trends that could impact public libraries. You can subscribe to it in a
variety of ways, such as:

   - *RSS feed.* You can receive the OPLIN 4cast via RSS feed by
   subscribing to the following URL:
   http://www.oplin.org/4cast/index.php/?feed=rss2.
   - *Live Bookmark.* If you're using the Firefox web browser, you can go
   to the 4cast website (http://www.oplin.org/4cast/) and click on the
   orange "radio wave" icon on the right side of the address bar. In Internet
   Explorer 7, click on the same icon to view or subscribe to the 4cast RSS
   feed.
   - *E-mail.* You can have the OPLIN 4cast delivered via e-mail (a'la
   OPLINlist and OPLINtech) by subscribing to the 4cast mailing list at
   http://mail.oplin.org/mailman/listinfo/OPLIN4cast.

© 2016 Ohio Public Library Information Network
[image: Find us on Slideshare] <http://www.slideshare.net/oplin>  [image:
Find us on Facebook] <http://www.facebook.com/oplin.org>  [image: Find us
on Google+] <https://plus.google.com/107751358238995507967>  [image: Find
us on Twitter] <http://www.twitter.com/oplin>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.oplin.org/pipermail/oplin4cast/attachments/20160406/1c0413f8/attachment.html>