THE ACCURATE LOCATION OF MOBILE TELEPHONES

Positioning systems are a key enabling technology for Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS). This is because most advanced applications require accurate location of vehicles. Much of the work to date on positioning has focused on the Global Positioning System (GPS). However, GPS has a number of deficiencies, including the cost of a GPS receiver and degraded performance in urban areas. An alternative that could overcome these deficiencies is to accurately locate a mobile telephone, based simply on the signals emitted by the mobile communications system. This is becoming practicable with the new mobile systems, such as Global System Mobile (GSM), which operate on a much wider bandwidth than the earlier analog systems. The location of mobile telephones can be done with no additional hardware in the handset, so reducing the cost of adding a positioning capability. As well, the large number of base stations that are normally installed in an urban area promise much more robust performance than GPS. This paper will identify suitable applications for mobile telephone positioning, describe the prospects for this technology, and present actual measurement results derived from GSM.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • Full conference proceedings available only on CD.
• Corporate Authors:

  ITS America

  1100 17th Street, NW, 12th Floor
  Washington, DC  United States  20036
• Authors:
  • Drane, C R
  • MacNaughton, M
  • Scott, C A
• Conference:
  • Intelligent Transportation: Realizing the Future. Abstracts of the Third World Congress on Intelligent Transport Systems
  • Location: Orlando, Florida
  • Date: 1996-10-14 to 1996-10-18
• Publication Date: 1996

Language

• English

Media Info

• Pagination: n.p.

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Accuracy; Intelligent transportation systems; Location; Mobile communication systems; Mobile telephones; Positioning; Urban areas
• Old TRIS Terms: Global system mobile; Positioning systems
• Subject Areas: Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; Planning and Forecasting; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 00741324
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Aug 7 1997 12:00AM