GPS World, December 2011

BUSINESS Industry news and developments GPS Galileo GLONASS THE WIRELESS LOCATION BASED SERVICES CSR Navizon Debut Indoor Location and Navigation Systems In November two companies unveiled indoor location positioning systems CSR Plc demonstrated its indoor location and navigation system at the Locations Beyond Summit in San Francisco in November CSRs SiRFusion location platform and SiRFstarV architecture are scheduled to become available in 2012 The company calls the system a self learning end to end platform that fuses multiple location technologies for accurate indoor location and navigation Navizon Inc also has a new system the Indoor Triangulation System I T S Navizon is the creator of Navizon One a global positioning system combining GPS Wi Fi and cellular signals SiRFusion CSR demonstrated its new system with a smartphone one of the target devices for the new tech Instead of relying solely on GPS to determine position the SiRFstarV architecture gathers real time information from GPS Galileo GLONASS and Compass satellites multiple radio systems such as Wi Fi and cellular and multiple MEMS sensors like accelerometers gyros and compasses It then combines this real time information with ephemeris data mapping cellular base station and Wi Fi access point location data and other cloud based aiding information using the SiRFusion platform The company reports that until now using Wi Fi technology required several seconds to provide a single indoor position fix which also had relatively low accuracy and a high degree of variability jitter By combining real time Wi Fi and satellite positioning information pedestrian dead reckoning using MEMS sensors and crowdsourced location and aiding data from a cloudbased server SiRFusion technology is able to achieve the rapid and more accurate indoor position fixes needed to make continuous indoor navigation a part of everyday life Unlike many other systems that require manual surveys to build and maintain an indoor Wi Fi and cellular location database the CSR Positioning Center CPC cloud based server is able to receive anonymous and voluntary location information wirelessly from users devices even indoors to improve the database said Dave Huntingford director of Product Management for the Mobile Business Area at CSR Navizon I T S Navizon I T S provides for room level indoor location by tracking the location of all Wi Fi enabled smartphones tablets and laptops in real time without requiring the installation of an app on the device The location determination is performed by small Navizon devices called nodes Navizons I T S nodes are located within 100 feet of each other covering a three dimensional area such as a multi story building or multi building campus SIRFUSION pulls data from the cloud According to Cyril Houri founder and CEO of Navizon No wiring or complicated set up is necessary The nodes are strategically arranged to ensure reliable triangulation and plug into an electrical outlet for power automatically configuring into a wireless network Once a node network is in place Navizon I T S constantly computes the locations of all Wi Fi enabled devices in the area and securely delivers them as a cloud service to the network owner The location of wireless devices can either be displayed on a browser window with Navizons user interface or accessed via an Application Programming Interface While the Navizon I T S can monitor movement or traffic patterns no personal information transmits over the system and identity privacy remains intact Organizations such as hospitals that need to know the location of its employees can choose to enable an identity feature SAMPLE Navizon ITS floor plan www gpsworld com December 2011 GPS World 27