Because of the critical needs for scalable data dissemination and efficient spatial query processing for supporting large-scale information systems with mobile users, there is a great demand for accurate positioning of mobile devices. Only with these capabilities, one will be able to develop scalable data dissemination and query evaluation infrastructure for querying, indexing, and routing datasets to support novel mobile applications. These needs will drive customers' willingness to pay for these capabilities. For example, important customers are firemen who will use this technology in a burning building to locate victims trapped in the building using this positioning method that is based on opportunistic communication among the group of firemen and the victim's mobile devices. In this proposal, the I-Corps team introduces new software for accurately determining the positions of mobile devices, even in GPS-denied environments.
The proposed innovative method for positioning does not use special hardware as UWB or ultrasounds transceivers. Instead, the proposed positioning software will run on typical smartphones and laptops. A GPS-denied target node with no position information communicates opportunistically with a number of in-range mobile peer nodes with some positioning capabilities. Data exchanges between the target node and peer nodes are used by the target node to refine its position estimation using three algorithms: Euclidean TOA (Time of Arrival), LMI (Linear Matrix Inequalities) and barycentric algorithms. Using the approximate ranges from the Euclidean TOA method, the LMI and barycentric algorithms are then applied to improve position accuracy.
