AN INDOOR GEO-FENCING BASED ACCESS CONTROL SYSTEM FOR WIRELESS NETWORKS

Abstract

Use of wireless network information for indoor positioning has been an area of interest since wireless networks became very popular. On the other hand, the market started to grow in variety and production volumes leading to a variety of devices with many different hardware and software combinations. In the field of indoor positioning, most of the existing technologies are dependent on additional hardware and/or infrastructure, which increases the cost and requirements for both users and providers.

This thesis investigates possible methods of coupling indoor geo-fencing with access control including authentication, identification, and registration in a system. Moreover, various techniques are studied in order to improve the robustness and security of such a system. The focus of these studies is to improve the proposed system in such a way that gives it the ability to operate properly in noisy, heterogeneous, and less controlled environments where the presence of attackers is highly probable. To achieve this, a classification based geo-fencing approach using Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) has been employed so that accurate geo-fencing is coupled with secure communication and computing. Experimental results show that considerable positioning accuracy has been achieved while providing high security measures for communication and transactions. Favouring diversity and generic design, the proposed implementation does not mandate users to undergo any system software modification or adding new hardware components.