Investigation into Seamless Indoor and Outdoor Positioning Based on UWB-GNSS Integration

01.01.2006 - 31.12.2008
Research funding project
Location-Based Services (LBS) has a wide spectrum of applications including fleet management, travel aids, location identification, emergency and vehicle navigation. Applications of this service can be further extended if reliable and high precision 3-dimensional positional information of a mobile device can be determined seamlessly in both indoor and outdoor environments. This ideal has not been materialized in Hong Kong due to the fact that at present, LBS are largely based on satellite and mobile network positioning techniques, where mobile positioning techniques currently can only able to provide geolocation in two dimensions, with accuracy level varies from the claimed less than 10 metres to as big as a few kilometers. In other countries such as United States, Wi-Fi positioning systems (WPS) and the combined WPS-GPS, namely E-GPS (integrated WPS and GPS system ) have been adopted by, for example Skyhook Wireless [http://www.skyhookwireless.com/solutions/asset.html], to provide nation-wide ubiquitous geolocation services with accuracy from one to a few metres (indoor) to tens of metres (outdoor). The European Galileo satellite navigation system mainly developed for civilian applications, expected to be fully operational by 2010, have already set a pathway for the future development of seamless indoor and outdoor positioning systems cater for various LBS applications. With the Navigation and Communication (Nav-Com) integration architecture, Galileo will provide an ideal platform for future development of a high accuracy 3-dimensional indoor and outdoor positioning system, to support a wide spectrum of location based services seen to have enormous market demand. There is an imminent need for carrying out research in this area to support the technology development. Although WPS and E-GPS can fulfil the general indoor and outdoor positioning requirements, positioning accuracy for LBS can be further improved with the emerging Ultra Wideband technology, to enable more reliable, accurate and efficient emergency decisions. The increasing demand for high speed wireless transmission of multimedia information and precise geolocation positioning in indoor environments have led to specific interests on Ultra Wide Band (UWB), a radio-communication technology originally developed for military applications in 1960. In Hong Kong, similar to other countries, there has been increasing demand from different organizations on research and development of UWB systems, leading to the release of the 3.1¿|10.6 GHz band for technical trial of UWB, which was announced by The Office of the Telecommunications Authority (OTFA) of the Hong Kong SAR on 27 May 2005. Recent research indicates that positioning with UWB technology is possible to achieve 50cm or better level of accuracy. It is not difficult to project that the fusion of UWB, WPS, GNSS and wireless networks will be the trend for sub-metre level or better and seamless indoor and outdoor 3-D positioning services. Moreover, with the improvement of sensitivity of GPS receivers such as receivers using SirfStar III chipset, further investigation should be carried out on the determination of best geolocation based on available range data source, particularly in the indoor-outdoor transition zone. The main objective of this project is to investigate algorithms for low-cost seamless high precision outdoor and indoor positioning based on the emerging technologies including UWB, Wi-Fi, and high sensitivity GPS.

People

Project leader

Institute

Grant funds

  • Vereine, Stiftungen, Preise Type of funder Vereine, Stiftungen, Preise Specific program RGC Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong SAR Government

Keywords

GermanEnglish
GNSSGNSS
UWBUltra-wideband radio
PositionierungLocation
IntegrationIntegration
NavigationNavigation

External partner

  • Department of Land Surveying and Geo-Informatics The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Publications