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NAVSOP Navigation System Rivals GPS

Posted by samzenpus on from the never-lost dept.

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."

2 of 135 comments (clear)

  1. What? Like assisted GPS (A-GPS)? by Mr0bvious · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    --
    Never happened. True story.
    1. Re:What? Like assisted GPS (A-GPS)? by wvmarle · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.