IODetector: A Generic Service for Indoor Outdoor Detection

The location and context switching, especially the indoor/outdoor switching, provides essential and primitive information for upper layer mobile applications. In this paper, the authors present IODetector: a lightweight sensing service which runs on the mobile phone and detects the indoor/outdoor environment in a fast, accurate, and efficient manner. Constrained by the energy budget, IODetector leverages primarily lightweight sensing resources including light sensors, magnetism sensors, cell-tower signals, etc. For universal applicability, IODetector assumes no prior knowledge (e.g., fingerprints) of the environment and uses only on-board sensors common to mainstream mobile phones.