Geo-fencing: Confining Wi-Fi Coverage to Physical Boundaries

  • Authors:
  • Anmol Sheth;Srinivasan Seshan;David Wetherall

  • Affiliations:
  • Intel Research, Seattle,;Carnegie Mellon University,;Intel Research, Seattle, and University of Washington,

  • Venue:
  • Pervasive '09 Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Pervasive Computing
  • Year:
  • 2009

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

Abstract

We present a means of containing Wi-Fi coverage to physical boundaries that are meaningful to users. We call it geo-fencing . Our approach is based on directional antennas, and our motivation is to provide wireless access and privacy models that are a natural fit with user expectations. To evaluate geo-fencing, we use measurements from an indoor testbed of Wi-Fi nodes and APs with electronically-steerable directional antennas. We find that by combining directionality, power control and coding across multiple APs, we are able to successfully confine Wi-Fi coverage to clients located within target regions of varying shapes and sizes; we can select between nodes located as close as five feet from each other.