NAVSOP Navigation System Rivals GPS

dangle writes "BAE Systems has developed a positioning solution that it claims will work even when GPS is unavailable. Its strategy is to use the collection of radio frequency signals from TV, radio and cellphone masts, even WiFi routers, to deduce a position. BAE's answer is dubbed Navigation via Signals of Opportunity (NAVSOP). It interrogates the airwaves for the ID and signal strength of local digital TV and radio signals, plus air traffic control radars, with finer grained adjustments coming from cellphone masts and WiFi routers. In any given area, the TV, radio, cellphone and radar signals tend to be at constant frequencies and power levels as they are are heavily regulated — so positions could be calculated from them. "The real beauty of NAVSOP is that the infrastructure required to make it work is already in place," says a BAE spokesman — and "software defined radio" microchips that run NAVSOP routines can easily be integrated into existing satnavs. The firm believes the technology could also work in urban concrete canyons where GPS signals cannot currently reach."

Comments

What? Like assisted GPS (A-GPS)?

[Mr0bvious]

Google has been using this for some time and is used on Android devices - you can see their patent here: http://www.google.com/patents/US7532158

A-GPS is not new (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisted_GPS), though they seem to want to extend it to other radio sources.

Re:What? Like assisted GPS (A-GPS)?

[wvmarle]

A-GPS still uses only GPS signals for positioning, but gets help from a data network (not necessarily mobile). Basically it receives certain orbital info of GPS satellites that are normally transmitted on the GPS signal itself. But regular GPS data is slow, it can take ten minutes or more to get all data complete. Over the network it's a fraction of a second. This often helps getting a fix much faster than with plain GPS, but the location itself is pure GPS based.

Some phones may also use the mobile network for triangulation, independent from GPS, and usually less accurate.

Re:Doesn't sound that accurate

[vlm]

Use a real GPS unit with no broadcast capabilities and you don't have that problem.

And you also won't have the benefit of having a computer able to access your location data either.

Why? Since I've done it, and its common knowledge how to do it, I'm thinking thats just wrong. Hard to believe its been over a decade since I was experimenting with ham radio APRS using a GPS, simply unplug the transmitter/set the broadcast timer to zero (or a billion) and you're done. Ever since the first NMEA output jack on a GPS in the 90s, people have been hooking them up to laptops and fooling around with big screen navigation displays (like a giant aircraft HSI, but for boats), homemade boat autopilots, automatic fishing trawling autopilots, homemade moving maps, stuff like that. The GPSD daemon has been around for I believe 18 years now, so 18 years ago it changed from a curiosity/hack to a very standardized interface. GPSD is currently maintained by ESR, you may have heard of him over the decades.

The only reason "your" computer aka cell phone broadcasts your GPS position without any control by you is because you bought into a walled garden. Its not your phone, and its not working for you.