YFind Positioning System™ (YPS™)

The deployment of YFind Positioning System (YPS™) transforms buildings into Location-Intelligent Infrastructures.

YPS™ is the indoor equivalent of the GPS (Global Positioning System). Just as how GPS works by using satellite signals to determine the position of a GPS receiver, YPS™ uses WiFi signals at any location to determine the position of a mobile device.

Since most buildings today already have WiFi networks in place, no (or little) additional hardware is required. Our solution is platform-independent through the use of an unified API which can be easily used by any app developer.

With the patent-pending YPS™, people can now navigate and find places in large, multi-level buildings with great accuracy.

Technology
Our patent-pending YFind Positioning System™ (YPS™) lies at the core of all our indoor positioning solutions.

YPS™ creates Location-Intelligent environments in buildings, using existing or dedicated WiFi networks/infrastructures.

This is completed in two phases: Calibration and Positioning.

Calibration
In the Calibration phase, we determine Calibration Points (CP) from which we collect Received Signal Strength Information (RSSI) readings off WiFi access points.

The RSSI readings at each CP are bundled with its indoor coordinates to create a RSSI fingerprint. And a Radio Map is formed by collecting all the RSSI fingerprints in a building.

This radio map is then associated with the GPS (Global Positioning System) coordinates of the building and stored in a database server.

Positioning
When a user turns on a YPS™-enabled app on his mobile device, it will first verify the GPS coordinates to identify the building the user is in.

Meanwhile, the device collects RSSI readings from the WiFi access points around it; and later sends it to the positioning server for comparison against records in the radio map. RSSI readings will continually fluctuate, and without the right technology, it is difficult to accurately estimate a position.

However, YFind’s patent-pending probabilistic algorithms performs reliably under under such dynamic conditions, and YPS™ is able to accurately estimate the users’ indoor coordinates despite these fluctuations.

The whole positioning phase described above can be easily implemented in any mobile app through a unified API.

What It Means
If all that technical stuff seems confusing to you, just have a look at this video… It just works!