Measurement-Reliability Learning and Geometry-Constrained Fusion for Robust Wi-Fi FTM Indoor Localization

Abstract

Indoor positioning using commodity Wi-Fi infrastructure is attractive for smart buildings and Internet of Things applications, but the practical accuracy of Wi-Fi Fine Timing Measurement (FTM) remains limited by non-line-of-sight propagation, multipath delay, access-point-dependent ranging bias, and unstable anchor geometry. This paper proposes a measurement-reliability learning and geometry-constrained fusion framework, termed MRL-GCF, for robust horizontal Wi-Fi FTM indoor localization. MRL-GCF learns the reliability of each access-point observation from a multi-factor representation that includes Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI), logarithmic FTM range, short-window range stability, RSSI fluctuation, access-point visibility, abnormal-range tendency, and coarse anchor geometry. A lightweight heteroscedastic neural calibrator estimates both range bias and observation uncertainty. A supervised reliability-regime head is further trained from residual-regime soft targets, and its entropy is used as a propagation-ambiguity measure. The learned uncertainty is fused with propagation ambiguity, map obstruction, material-aware obstruction cues, and anchor geometry to select reliable anchors and construct a trust-weighted nonlinear least-squares localization objective. To avoid overestimating performance from repeated scans at identical survey points, both scan-level and point-held-out protocols were adopted. Experiments were conducted in a lobby, a classroom, and a dormitory using 4410 synchronized RSSI-FTM scans. On 882 scan-level test queries, MRL-GCF achieved mean absolute errors of 0.88 m, 0.55 m, and 1.20 m, with sub-3 m success rates of 98.0%, 99.0%, and 96.5%, respectively. Additional replay-based dynamic, temporal, cross-device, AP-density, uncertainty-calibration, map-availability, and coefficient-sensitivity analyses were included to examine deployment-oriented robustness. These results indicate that learning measurement reliability while preserving geometric constraints provides a practical and interpretable solution for robust Wi-Fi FTM indoor positioning.