Android P WiFi - RTT

Determine a device’s distance from wireless access points

What is Wi-Fi RTT?

Wi-Fi Round Trip Time is a part of the IEEE 802.11mc specification. This specification defines how to determine a device’s distance from wireless access points, henceforth referred to as APs. Given the location and distances from three different APs, we can use multilateration to determine a device’s location within a couple of meters.

How Does Wi-Fi RTT Work?

The formula that holds the key to allowing us to determine the distance from a device to an AP comes from high school physics, d = vt. In other words, distance is equal to your velocity, or in this case speed, times the time you’re traveling. So, if we measure the amount of time it takes for data to get from an AP to our device and then multiply that by the speed, which for wireless signals is the speed of light, we will get the distance to that AP, which can be used in the multilateration algorithm.

What are the Benefits?

Some of the greatest areas that I can see immediate benefit from these high precision locations are in the realm of automation, indoor navigation, and smart home voice commands. An example in the automation realm would be if a device operates in different rooms indoors, it could use the location to know exactly what room it is in and perform the proper tasks for that room.

*NOTE* - This App is in beta version & might not work on all device's