News - BAE Systems develops alternative to GPS

[HEXUS]

Capable of potentially replacing or working with GPS, in-building tracking could open doors.

Read more.

[kingpotnoodle]

Simple ideas often very useful, sounds great for low-moderate granularity locating, can't see if being as accurate as pure GPS but definitely better than the nothing or the wildly inaccurate results from cell triangulation we have in dead spots now.

[Phage]

Sounds a lot like Skyhook.
http://www.skyhookwireless.com/howitworks/

[wombat]

Lordy it's BAE, means the government will probably just say yes please for a figure of 100 million and end up paying ten fold!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I thought alternatives like GLONASS,Gallieo and Beidou already existed??

[Phage]

I've not heard of all of those but I assume that like GPS they're sateillite based ?
This and Skyhook are more about mapping the electromagnetic 'map' based on GPS readings. Once mapped, a position can be calculated without any sateillites.

[edzieba]

Ir's not a replacement for GPS, nor is it satellite based. Basically, it uses GPS to get an initial position fix, the uses the relative motion of surrounding radio sources to track relative position (e.g if transmitter x is in front of you, then moves 90deg to the left, you have likely rotated 90deg to the right).

[miniyazz]

I like how it uses GPS jammer signals to approximate your position

[Phage]

Ir's not a replacement for GPS, nor is it satellite based. Basically, it uses GPS to get an initial position fix, the uses the relative motion of surrounding radio sources to track relative position (e.g if transmitter x is in front of you, then moves 90deg to the left, you have likely rotated 90deg to the right).

GPS is sateillite. Perhaps you should read what I said and the Skyhook link.

[edzieba]

GPS is sateillite. Perhaps you should read what I said and the Skyhook link.

You obviously did not actually read my post:
1) Skyhook does not use satellites for mapping. It derives an absolute position from comparing received signals to a database of known mobile phone masts and wifi hotspots.
2) the BAE system derives a relative position from unknown local transmitters. It does not use satellite transmissions, as these are too faint and would change very little when moving.
It can be given an initial absolute reference position, and this can be from GPS/Galileo/GLONASS positioning, a hand-input position, or simply from a 0,0,0;0°00:00 assumed reference.

The interesting part of this system would be knowing how they discriminate fixed unknown transmitters from mobile transmitters on-the-fly.