COMMERCIAL AUTOMATIC VEHICLE LOCATION IN THE USA - CURRENT STATUS AND FUTURE EVOLUTION. NAV 85 - LAND NAVIGATION AND LOCATION FOR MOBILE APPLICATIONS - PAPERS PRESENTED AT THE 1985 CONFERENCE OF THE ROYAL INSTITUTE OF NAVIGATION, YORK, 9-11 SEPTEMBER 1985

The requirements of the commercial market for automatic vehicle location systems are examined and the system marketed by motorola in the USA studied in detail. This system utilises the loran-c (long range navigation) network which was originally installed as a navigation aid to marine craft and which has a coverage of 75% of the USA and 90% of the population. A 'land smart' loran-c/avl unit can operate in the metropolitan environment with an accuracy within 200 m. The communication sub-system is designed to be integrated into single or multichannel existing voice systems or existing or new data systems. Four techniques for data transmission are described. Details are given of the motorola 68000 microcomputer display system which shows details of vehicle identification, classification, location, direction and time. With regard to system performance the various states of the loran-c/avl unit in tracking are described and the reasons for errors explained. A comparison is made between loran-c/avl and gps (global positioning system). Loran-c/avl is found to have a slight advantage in terms of coverage whereas gps has a greater accuracy. The determining factor is likely to be cost with gps being seven times as expensive. (TRRL)

• Corporate Authors:

  Royal Institute of Navigation

  1 Kensington Gore
  London,   England 
• Authors:
  • Janc, R V
• Publication Date: 1985

Media Info

• Features: References;
• Pagination: 6 p.

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Artificial satellites; Automatic vehicle location; Conferences; Errors; Performance
• ITRD Terms: 3882: Automatic; 8525: Conference; 6440: Error; 9061: Location; 4016: Remote sensing; 1255: Vehicle
• Subject Areas: Highways; Planning and Forecasting;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 00491614
• Record Type: Publication
• Source Agency: Transport Research Laboratory
• Files: ITRD, TRIS
• Created Date: Mar 31 1990 12:00AM