# Federated Learning for Localization: A Privacy-Preserving Crowdsourcing Method

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.01911 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.01911/

## Key facts

- Cited by 9 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 7 Jan 2020.

## Built on by (most cited first, 9 of 9)

- [FedBalancer: Data and Pace Control for Efficient Federated Learning on Heterogeneous Clients](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.01601/) (2022)
- [Federated Learning for Computationally-Constrained Heterogeneous Devices: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.09182/) (2023)
- [Tighter Regret Analysis and Optimization of Online Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.06491/) (2022)
- [A Survey on Federated Learning and its Applications for Accelerating Industrial Internet of Things](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.10501/) (2021)
- [Aggregating Capacity in FL through Successive Layer Training for Computationally-Constrained Devices](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.17005/) (2023)
- [Federated Distillation based Indoor Localization for IoT Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.11440/) (2022)
- [Federated Learning for 6G: Paradigms, Taxonomy, Recent Advances and Insights](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.04688/) (2023)
- [Learning-Based WiFi Fingerprint Inpainting via Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.18915/) (2024)
- [Efficient Federated Finetuning of Tiny Transformers with Resource-Constrained Devices](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.07826/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Received Signal Strength (RSS) fingerprint-based localization has attracted a lot of research effort and cultivated many commercial applications of location-based services due to its low cost and ease of implementation. Many studies are exploring the use of deep learning (DL) algorithms for localization. DL's ability to extract features and to classify autonomously makes it an attractive solution for fingerprint-based localization. These solutions require frequent retraining of DL models with vast amounts of measurements. Although crowdsourcing is an excellent way to gather immense amounts of data, it jeopardizes the privacy of participants, as it requires to collect labeled data at a centralized server. Recently, federated learning has emerged as a practical concept in solving the privacy preservation issue of crowdsourcing participants by performing model training at the edge devices in a decentralized manner; the participants do not expose their data anymore to a centralized server. This paper presents a novel method utilizing federated learning to improve the accuracy of RSS fingerprint-based localization while preserving the privacy of the crowdsourcing participants. Employing federated learning allows ensuring preserving the privacy of user data while enabling an adequate localization performance with experimental data captured in real-world settings. The proposed method improved localization accuracy by 1.8 meters when used as a booster for centralized learning and achieved satisfactory localization accuracy when used standalone.