On December 18th, Tom Bravenec defended his PhD thesis entitled “Exploiting Wireless Communications for Localization: Beyond Fingerprinting” under the supervision of Michel Gould and Joaquín Torres along with Brno University of Technology professor Tomas Fryza. This thesis is part of the cohort of ESR from the European Joint Doctorate Marie Sklodowska-Curie in A Network for Dynamic Wearable Applications with Privacy Constraints (A-WEAR).

Tom’s work provides novel contributions to the area of privacy measures and evaluation in Indoor Positioning Systems (IPS), particularly in the context of ubiquitous Wi-Fi networks. It addresses non-cooperative user tracking through the exploitation of unencrypted Wi-Fi management frames, which contain enough information for device fingerprinting despite MAC address randomization. Tom’s doctoral project also explores an algorithm to estimate room occupancy based on passive Wi-Fi frame sniffing and Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) measurements. Such room occupancy detection has implications for energy regulations in smart buildings. Furthermore, his thesis investigates methods to reduce computational requirements of machine learning and positioning algorithms through optimizing neural networks and employing interpolation techniques for IPS based on RSSI fingerprinting. The work contributes datasets, analysis scripts, and firmware to improve reproducibility and supports advancements in the LBS field.

Overall, Tom’s work provides a relevant number of novel and efficient solutions well beyond the state-of-the-art in the field of Indoor Positioning Systems. You deserve it!