ETH - Indoor Positioning & Indoor Navigation


16:00 - 16:30	Herbert Niedermeier (presenting author, at University FAF Munich), Bernd Eissfeller, Jon Winkel, Thomas Pany, Bernhard Riedl, Thomas Wörz, Robert Schweikert, Stefano Lagrasta, Gustavo Lopez-Risueno, David Jiminez-Banos: DINGPOS: High Sensitivity GNSS platform for deep indoor scenarios Deep indoor scenarios are one of the most challenging areas of application for satellite navigation (GNSS) in personal navigation devices. Especially severe signal attenuation, as well as heavy multipath is constraining the use of GNSS for deep indoor applications. The project DINGPOS is focusing on the development of a platform for pedestrian users which can acquire and track GNSS signals also in most adverse indoor signal conditions. The main idea of the concept is the extension of coherent signal integration time of the GNSS receiver to the domain of several seconds, which increases the correlation gain significantly. To facilitate this goal, a very long and very precise signal replica is needed. Therefore the system must reproduce the user motion, the navigation message data bits and the satellite constellation precisely. Hence the system uses a sensor suite of several state of the art indoor positioning sensors and innovative fusion algorithms.

16:30 - 17:00	Andrey Soloviev (presenting author), T. Jeffrey Dickman: Deeply Integrated GPS for Indoor Navigation The deeply integrated GPS receiver technology has been developed to enhance the robustness of GPS signal processing by implementing GPS/inertial sensor fusion at the signal processing level. As a result, this technology is capable of maintaining a complete tracking status (i.e., code phase, Doppler frequency and carrier phase) even for extremely week signals such as GPS signals that are attenuated by 30 dB from their open sky conditions. This paper will discuss the results of a feasibility study that was performed to provide precise (sub-centimeter-level) carrier phase GPS measurement indoors. The study was conducted using real data collected from actual GPS hardware in indoor scenarios. The paper will overview deeply integrated receiver approach and then present results of the indoor GPS signal evaluation.

17:00 - 17:30	Nadezda Sokolova (presenting author), Daniele Borio, Börje Forssell, Gérard Lachapelle: Doppler Rate Measurements in Standard and High Sensitivity (HS) GPS Receivers: Theoretical Analysis and Comparison Due to the capability of GPS to provide an accurate and stable long-term reference, the use of a GPS receiver as an acceleration sensor has gained an increasing research interest. GPS-derived acceleration information is determined using the Doppler rate measurements that are directly estimated from a Frequency Lock Loop (FLL) output or obtained by double-differentiating the carrier phase observations produced by the PLL. This paper presents a complete theoretical model, allowing the evaluation of the Doppler rate accuracy relating the variance and biases of the Doppler rate measurements to the carrier-to-noise density ratio (C/N0), the user dynamics and the carrier tracking loop parameters. Both standard and HS receiver architectures are considered and the developed theoretical model is validated using live GPS data. Results obtained empirically are compared against the ones obtained using the developed theoretical model. In all cases a good agreement between empirical and theoretical results is observed.

17:30 - 17:45	Thomas Pany (presenting author, at IFEN GmbH), Eckart Göhler, Markus Irsigler and Jón Winkel: On the state-of-the-art of GNSS signal acquisition – a comparison of time and frequency domain methods This paper summarizes high sensitivity GNSS signal acquisition algorithms used for ASIC and software receiver implementations. The pros and cons and those techniques are compared and discussed. Two algorithms (one ASIC algorithm in time domain and one software receiver algorithm in frequency domain) are implemented in a highly efficient way and are tested with a GNSS signal simulator and in real world situations. Both use the same L1/L5 RF frontend and operate on identical 2-bit samples. The sensitivity comparison is completed by including the newest commercial GPS chip evaluation boards in the test runs.

17:45 - 18:00	Erwin Löhnert (at IFEN, presenting author), Wolfgang Bär, Eckart Göhler, Jochen Möllmer: Galileo / GPS Indoor Navigation & Positioning for SAR and Tracking Applications “INDOOR” is a German research project for providing a combined outdoor/indoor navigation capability for location based services of security-sensitive applications (SAR) as well as for important professional logistic or tracking applications, e.g. asset/child tracking. The project consortium is built of nine partners from industry, research institutes and universities with IFEN GmbH being the coordinator of the project. The work is funded by the German Aerospace Center DLR to support future applications for outdoor/indoor scenarios with a focus on the combination of GPS and Galileo, accompanied by assisted information. The activities undertaken in the project follow a three phase approach, consisting of phase 1 Core Technologies – Concept & Evaluation, phase 2 Core Components – Development & Verification and finally phase 3 Application / Demonstration, planned to take place by the end of year 2011.

18:00 - 18:02	Klemen Kozmus Trajkovski (presenting author), Oskar Sterle, Bojan Stopar: GNSS Positioning in Adverse Conditions (Poster Teaser) High Sensitivity GNSS has made satellite navigation possible even in those environments which do not favour satellite signals. In environments such as forests, urban canyons, and even some building interiors, GNSS signals are not entirely obstructed, but rather attenuated. GNSS positioning is based either on the receiver’s internal solution or on the processing of raw observation data. In adverse conditions, basic code-based solutions can cause major errors in the estimated position, primarily due to multipath effects. Positioning performance can be improved however, using appropriate processing of code and Doppler observations. Besides the common procedures for estimating the receiver’s position, robust estimation methods have been used to minimise the effects of gross observation errors. Differential GNSS, elevation and SNR-dependent weighting do not perform well in adverse conditions where signal reception is poor.

Session Chair: Prof. Alain Geiger, ETH Zurich

Thursday, September 16
Auditorium D2


08:15 - 08:45	Kewen Sun: Composite GNSS Signal Acquisition in Presence of Data Sign Transition In summary in this paper the novel channels combining techniques based on two steps acquisition scheme have been proposed for effectively recovering all the transmitted power in both available data and pilot channels and dealing with the bit sign transitions problem to fit the new GNSS signal modulation requirements. The proposed innovative acquisition techniques improve the performance and provide more reliable signal detection even in weak signal environment, which can be applied to the new composite GNSS signals where the secondary codes could change the relative polarity every primary code period. It is important to emphasize that a greater computational load is generally required to perform the acquisition process for each channels combining strategy when two steps acquisition scheme is adopted.

08:45 - 09:15	Isabelle Kraemer (presenting author), Iva Bartunkova, Bernd Eissfeller: Evaluation of a Peer-to-Peer Kalman Filter in Weak-Signal Areas using a Software GNSS-Signal-Simulator The interest in pedestrian navigation in urban canyons and indoors continuously increases since more and more devices are equipped with a GNSS chip. But the navigation in weak-signal areas demand more sophisticated techniques than positioning in areas with free line-of-sight. One possible solution is the integration of Assisted-GNSS (A-GNSS). But A-GNSS requires increased network traffic and a device that is able to process assistance data the here introduced avoids these drawbacks. Instead basic sensors for dead reckoning and local peer-to-peer ad-hoc networks are used to provide a position. Peers apply a Kalman Filter mutually to improve their estimated position. The approach is examined by simulations and uses a Software GNSS-signal-simulator to realistically emulate weak-signal areas.

09:15 - 09:45	Danai Skournetou (presenting author) and Elena-Simona Lohan: Pulse shaping investigation for the applicability of future GNSS signals in indoor environments It has been commonly recognized that the use of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signals for indoor positioning is extremely challenging due to the significantly attenuated signal power and the presence of strong multipath components. However, as the advent of new GNSS signals is expected to improve the position accuracy in outdoor environments, their applicability in indoor environments shall be re-examined. In this paper, we investigate the impact of different pulse shapes on the tracking accuracy of the future Global Positioning System (GPS) and Galileo signals. The simulation results indicate what the best pulse shape for indoor scenarios is and whether we need to employ different shapes when dealing with code-based or carrier phase-based estimation.

09:45 - 09:47	Marco Piras (presenting author, at DITAG, Politecnico di Torino), Alberto Cina: Indoor positioning using low cost GPS receivers: tests and statistical analyses (Poster Teaser) In recent years, GPS chipset technologies have been changed completely in order to allow for positioning under extreme conditions, such as in indoor environments. The necessity of always having a positioning capability is rising, but what accuracy level can be reached? Some specific tests have been carried out to estimate the limits for indoor positioning. It has also been evaluated whether this technique can be used for GIS applications. A low cost receiver tailored to indoor positioning, has been used in several tests in a test field, in both kinematic and static mode. The results show that the obtained performance in indoor positioning is encouraging, but still needs to be improved using additional sensors (i.e. INS, RF).

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