Global Positioning Without GPS

GadgetMike sends word of an award to Boeing for work on a Robust Positioning System that could make use of cell signals, television transmissions, and other clues to provide position information when GPS is unavailable. (Wonder if they've heard about Skyhook Wireless, which does a similar job based on Wi-Fi hotspots, for 2500 US cities and towns.) The work is being sponsored by the US military, so it's not surprising that they don't want to rely on upcoming GPS enhancers or replacements from France, China, and Russia. Here is the Boeing press release.

Comments

Not a new idea really

[zappepcs]

Pilots have used VOR http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VHF_omnidirectional_r ange for a long time. Knowing the lat/lon position of other radio beacons and being able to detect them is (IIRC) something that was experimented with for robotic vehicles.

Using geo-data and good state of the art receivers, it would be possible to locate your position reasonably accurately if you have many landmark transmitting beacons. The trouble is making those receivers small enough to be useful. Of course, this might not work too well in the middle of a desert but would function well enough for many problems.

LORAN

[Cyberax]

We've had http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LORAN since WWII. It works fairly well for ships and airplanes, I'm sure it will be quite enough to guide airplanes to nearest aerodrome in case of aliens knocking off GPS satellites.