how to obtain distances in meter using gps device?

[12angel86]

hi

we are currently working on our thesis project and this is about measuring signal strength in different wireless signal. were using inssider 2.1 version in our project and our problem is we configure gps in our comp. latitude and longitude were obtained but we dont know how to convert these parameters in distance.

One more thing is we dont know where is the transmitter gps reading and the receiver gps reading.
where confused if the gps reading below might be the receiver reading or the above gps reading with the APs were the transmitter gps reading or there just the same??!!..

please help us our final defense is fast approaching...

and also there is reading in the gps device itself. were really confused.

[Tyler]

The lat/lon for each access point is where your GPS device was (and likely you too ) when the strongest signal was received. The only way to know where an AP really is is to walk around until the signal is the strongest and taking note of the lat/lon for the AP.
To get the locations of the APs, you could start logging to a GPX file, then walk around the area where the APs are, and later convert the GPX log to a summary KML file. This KML file will have the places the APs were the strongest. You can open the file in Google Earth, which should allow you to get the distance between the APs and another point.

[Stephen]

angel,

Thank you for a great question! I'm going to sticky this convo as I think it will help answer this question for a lot of people that might have it.

Thanks Tyler for an awesome reply!

Stephen

[12angel86]

The lat/lon for each access point is where your GPS device was (and likely you too ) when the strongest signal was received. The only way to know where an AP really is is to walk around until the signal is the strongest and taking note of the lat/lon for the AP.
To get the locations of the APs, you could start logging to a GPX file, then walk around the area where the APs are, and later convert the GPX log to a summary KML file. This KML file will have the places the APs were the strongest. You can open the file in Google Earth, which should allow you to get the distance between the APs and another point.

@tyler

is it okay that i will leave 1 AP(which is our basis for our project) only to easily get the locaTION and distance??..