Estimation of locations in an underground shopping mall through inter-terminal message exchange

Recently, many location estimation methods have been proposed and used for navigation in a variety of environments. However, navigation inside shopping malls, including those underground, where the Global Positioning System (GPS) cannot be used reliably, is still at the research stage. This paper proposes a location estimation algorithm that relies on communication between the terminals of passers-by and salespersons in a mall, rather than on GPS. The level of accuracy of the proposed algorithm has been evaluated using an evaluation system that was built on a Mobile Ad Hoc Network (MANET) emulator and simulated a real underground shopping mall.