Indoor geolocation
science is vital for the implementation of the fourth generation (4G) wireless
information networks. The 4G wireless indoor networks are expected to provide
geolocation services to locate people and important portable equipment
and support multi-media services to interconnect a wide range of equipment
with a wide range of QoS and dynamic data rate requirements at a very low
cost. Geolocation applications supported by these networks will provide
a number of innovative and vital technologies for commercial, public safety,
and military applications. In commercial applications for residential and
nursing homes environments indoor geolocation technology will provide for
tracking the elderly and children who are away from visual supervision,
for navigating the blind and other special need people, and for locating
in-demand portable equipment in hospitals. In the public safety and military
applications, indoor geolocation systems will provide for tracking the
inmates in prisons and navigating policeman, fire fighters, and soldiers
to safely complete their rescue operation inside buildings. Although the
myriad of indoor geolocation applications have already attracted public
attention to the extend that it has been addressed in several mass media
scientific programs, there has been no serious attempt to develop a scientific
basis to evaluate the physical limitation of these systems.
The existing geolocation
system (GPS) do not work in indoor areas and there is a need for new and
innovative signal processing and locating algorithms to handle positioning
in indoor area. However, there is no scientific framework that accurately
and quantitatively relates the multipath characteristics of the indoor
radio channel to excessive positioning error observed in geolocation systems
operating in indoor environments.
The principal research
goal of this project is to provide a foundation for the indoor geolocation
science that must provide for the design and performance evaluation of
indoor geolocation systems. Two specific research objectives to be met
to achieve this goal are:
Multipath radio
channel characteristics for telecommunication and geolocation applications