[The below is noted by Skybridge Spectrum Foundation and Telesaurus LLCs.

They hold 200 and

900 MHz FCC licenses nationwide in the US for Cooperative High Accuracy Location (C-HALO)
for Smart Transport, Energy and Environment Radio (STEER) systems.]

http://www.gpsworld.com/gnss-system/integration-with-other-technologies/innovation-ubiquitous-positioning-4161?page_id=1

Integration with Other Technologies

Innovation: Ubiquitous Positioning

June 1, 2007 By: Alan Dodson,Gethin Wyn Roberts Ph.D.,Terry Moore,Xiaolin Meng GPS World

Anyone, Anything: Anytime, Anywhere

INNOVATION INSIGHTS with Richard Langley

MARK WEISER IS NOT EXACTLY a household name. He was a chief technology officer at the Xerox
Corporation's famous Palo Alto Research Center. This is the same outfit which brought us laser printing,
Ethernet communications, the graphical user interface paradigm (including the mouse), and object-oriented
programming.
Like many of those who make a significant difference in
technical fields, Mark Weiser's contributions are well
known but his name is not. Dr. Weiser introduced the
concept of "ubiquitous computing." He coined this term in
1988 to describe a new generation of the computer era,
where the first two generations, that of the mainframe and
the personal computer, would be superseded by one in
which computers would disappear into the objects that
surround us in our daily life both at the office and at home.
He further posited that the best computer is a quiet,
invisible servant whose "calm technology" informs us but
Richard Langley doesn't demand our focus or attention. His idea, often
tagged "UbiComp," has borne fruit and we now have
smart coffee pots, smart printers, smart copy machines and the like, all connected via a wired or wireless
network.

Users of some of the smart devices in our UbiComp world, such as mobile telephones, personal digital
assistants, cameras, and camcorders, would benefit by knowing their location wherever they might be —
whether it's in an open field, on a street surrounded by skyscrapers, or inside an apartment building. As we
all know, conventional GPS receivers don't always work where we would like them to. In order for a
UbiComp device to know its position anywhere and anytime, we need "ubiquitous positioning" or UbiPos.
And like UbiComp, UbiPos should inform us but not demand our focus or attention. In this month's column,
we take a look at the available technologies that might be used to supplement conventional GPS positioning

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and some initial testing that will eventually lead to a UbiPos world, one in which we can locate anyone,
anything, anytime, anywhere.

"Innovation" is a regular column that features discussions about recent advances in GPS technology and its
applications as well as the fundamentals of GPS positioning. The column is coordinated by Richard Langley
of the Department of Geodesy and Geomatics Engineering at the University of New Brunswick, who
welcomes your comments and topic ideas. To contact him, see the "Contributing Editors" section.

Ubiquitous computing or UbiComp represents the third wave in computing, which has evolved from the
mainframe (one computer shared by many users) and personal computing (one person using one computer)
eras. This is the so-called "calm technology" era, where we are no longer troubled by computing
technology: the technology, although it pervades many aspects of our daily lives, recedes into the
background, allowing us to concentrate on the task at hand. It encompasses many supporting disciplines
such as distributed computing, mobile computing, telecommunications, sensor networks, human-computer
interaction, location sensing, and artificial intelligence, just to name a few. Ubiquitous positioning or
UbiPos, is an important element of UbiComp, yet it has not yet been well studied, and this impedes the
development and applications of UbiComp.

Two different and even conflicting general perspectives currently prevail about the roles of GNSS or
integrated GNSS for ubiquitous positioning in the context of UbiComp: either GNSS positioning, notably
GPS positioning, is a mature technology that can deliver about 10-meter positioning accuracy, or GNSS is
not appropriate technology at all for UbiComp because it has poor reliability when used indoors or in
obscured environments for which a mass market exists. The latter reputation comes from positioning trials
in city centers that have often suffered from lack of signals due to obstructions by the surroundings. People
with this latter perspective try to avoid using GPS.

In this article, we address from the GNSS researchers' perspective what available location-sensing
technologies could be employed for UbiComp, what major barriers hamper further exploitation of UbiComp,
and how different positioning and advanced computing technologies could be integrated seamlessly to
provide guaranteed positioning solutions at an expected accuracy for different varieties of UbiComp
applications, from millimeter-level accuracy for intelligent structural monitoring to tens of meters accuracy
for cargo tracking.

The ultimate objective of UbiPos is to locate people, objects, or both, anytime, whether they are indoors or
outdoors or moving between the two, at predefined location accuracies, with the support of one or more
location-sensing devices and associated infrastructure.

Of the many such available technologies, GPS undoubtedly plays a significant role for tracking people and
objects on land, at sea, in the air and space, or even underwater, with positioning accuracies varying from
several tens of meters to a few millimeters. It is the only system that can be used to carry out absolute and
global positioning. GPS has begun to revolutionize people's lives and become a necessity of daily routine.
However, GPS is of course not without its limitations. In particular, the positioning capability is seriously
degraded when used indoors, underground, or in some urban areas. To deliver UbiPos, a combination of
GPS with new satellite signals and systems such as the European Galileo system and other global or
regional augmentation systems represents a possible solution.

On the medium or small scale, many other location-sensing technologies, such as ground based pseudolites
[including terrestrial multilateration], ultra-wideband (UWB), and radio frequency identification (RFID)
have developed over the years to address the problems of location sensing, with each approach solving a
slightly different problem or supporting different applications.

The first part of this article is a summary of currently available location sensing technologies for UbiPos in
supporting ubiquitous computing. As an example of the authors' effort in UbiPos, a network real-time

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kinematic GPS (NRTK GPS) testbed facility is introduced in the second part of this article. A key goal has
been to improve the understanding of the positioning errors or accuracies of UbiPos for ubiquitous
computing. Many location sensing systems lack description of these parameters. With the support of this
NRTK GPS facility, a real-time error index of UbiPos by GPS positioning was investigated and a field
vehicle tracking trial was also carried out on different road sections consisting of private roads, urban ring
roads, and a motorway. We present relevant results and some statistics in the third and fourth parts. In the
final part of this article, we present out conclusions and recommendations.

Technologies for UbiPos

Many mobile applications rely on GPS to provide instantaneous position information. GPS and its global
and regional counterparts are now, and will be for some time to come, the most useful, accurate and flexible
outdoor positioning technology. However, the already weak satellite signals received by a mobile GPS
receiver are significantly attenuated by the surroundings in an urban environment, resulting in poor
positioning solutions or even no position fixes at all. To help address this issue, GPS itself is undergoing
modernization and several other GNSSs will be in place within the next decade or so to form a much
improved GNSS space segment. Other location sensing systems are currently being used (or have the
potential to be used) to extend GNSS positioning into the areas where a GNSS on its own cannot presently
deliver.

GNSS. In addition to modernization of GPS, a renewal of Russia's GLONASS is currently underway, and
Europe's Galileo system, although delayed, is also under development.

For UbiPos, the successful development of the Galileo system, the completion of modernization of the GPS
Block II constellation and the revival and modernization of GLONASS will increase the availability of
signals in space (SiS) and hence the robustness and accuracy of satellite-based positioning. This will be of
particular benefit for precise real-time positioning since carrier-phase ambiguities will be more robustly
determined with the multiple frequencies that will be available. However, there is a risk that the benefits a
multiple GNSS consisting of GPS, Galileo and GLONASS can bring to the end users might not be realized
as anticipated. For instance, a recent test carried out by the authors with GPS- and GLONASS-enabled
receivers on the campus of the University of Nottingham revealed that under medium level signal
obstruction conditions only about a 10 percent improvement in solution accuracy was achieved compared
with GPS-only positioning. It can be envisaged that even with an increased number of the observable
satellites, outdoor positioning in dense urban areas might still pose a problem since the benefit of the slightly
improved satellite geometry of multiple GNSS constellations might be compromised by narrow streets and
high rise buildings. Furthermore, indoor positioning, which forms a basic requirement for UbiPos, may only
gain marginal additional benefit from combined use of future GNSSs.

Augmented GNSS. Augmentation systems improve integrity, reliability, accuracy, and continuity of GNSS
positioning and navigation. For instance, the Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) increases
horizontal accuracy from typically 10–12 meters with GPS alone, to 1–2 meters, making it possible to
determine on which side of the highway a vehicle is traveling, or even in which lane.Furthermore, many
new ITS applications, such as GNSS-based vehicle collision avoidance, can now be explored.

In addition to transmitting GPS corrections, the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service
(EGNOS) is also designed to broadcast GLONASS corrections. WAAS and EGNOS also provide additional
ranging measurements from their geostationary satellites. The latter is a very useful characteristic for
UbiPos, in very dense urban areas, since the combination of extra measurements from geostationary
satellites with densified GNSS SiS can significantly improve the accuracy, integrity and reliability of GPS
and GLONASS.

The only dedicated GNSS augmentation system so far for tackling GNSS positioning restrained by local
terrain and dense buildings in urban areas is Japan's Quasi-Zenith Satellite System. This system is designed
such that at least one of the three inclined geosynchronous satellites will be close to the zenith (with an

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elevation angle of at least 80 degrees) for about eight hours, in mid-latitude areas. This will greatly benefit
UbiPos in large cities in Japan (such as in Tokyo), where high buildings block the signals from satellites at
low elevation angles.

It is worth pointing out that most regional augmentation systems are currently under different stages of
concept design, development, deployment and experiment, like their GNSS counterparts such as
Beidou/Compass, Galileo, and GLONASS. It is also necessary to point out that even if everything is
eventually successfully implemented as planned, indoor positioning will still be a big challenge for the
GNSS community. There is still a very long way to go before we can achieve truly UbiPos. Perhaps, the
only way forward is to integrate GNSSs and their regional augmentation systems with other (terrestrial)
local positioning systems.

High Sensitivity GNSS. High Sensitivity GNSS (HSGNSS) has the capacity to track weak GNSS signals
under restricted conditions such as urban canyons or even inside buildings. It represents a cheap solution for
asset and personnel tracking, and is especially useful for a variety of lower accuracy UbiPos applications.
For instance, a QinetiQ C/A-code L1 GPS receiver module costs about £200 and has 5-meter outdoor and
50-meter indoor positioning accuracy.

FIGURE 1 shows two trajectories collected by using a high grade GPS/INS platform and a QinetiQ HSGPS
receiver. In this figure, the continuous green line represents GPS fixes at a high sampling rate from the
GPS/INS platform by using carrier-phase measurements and the sparse deep red points correspond to the
QinetiQ GPS output at a lower sampling rate. Both are post-processed results.

Figure 1 Trial carried out close to the University of

Nottingham, with a maximum 36-meter deviation from the
road curb line using high sensitivity GPS and deviations of a
few centimeters using integrated GPS/INS positioning

Assisted GPS. The range of signal levels at which a GPS receiver can operate can be greatly extended if the
receiver is not required to extract the navigation message from the signal. Although a signal might be too
weak to demodulate the message, it may still be sufficiently strong to enable the receiver to make code
measurements. Required data for positioning, such as ephemeris, satellite clock error, and atmospheric error
coefficients, can be provided to a GPS receiver over a cellular telephone link. The cellular network could
also supply timing information to help the receiver to acquire signals more quickly. This mode of receiver
operation is known as assisted GPS (A-GPS).

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Inertial Navigation Systems. Inertial Navigation Systems (INS) are fully autonomous navigation systems
for military and civil navigation applications. Navigation solutions provided by INS, however, drift over
time. As an aiding sensor, GPS can reduce the drift of INS by providing regular fix updates and INS can
bridge the short period gaps where GPS signals are unavailable. Although GPS/INS integration might be an
expensive and complicated solution for UbiPos, depending on the devices used, it might be the only way to
bridge GNSS positioning gaps.

There are some misconceptions related to the ability of INS to augment GNSS. For example, it has been
suggested that the integration of GPS and INS will improve the ultimate positioning. As outlined above,
INS can only be used to bridge the position gaps and the continuous positioning accuracy of an integrated
system maintained by INS after the failure of GPS positioning is actually governed by the quality of the
final GPS positioning fix. The ability of INS to bridge these gaps with no reduction in the positioning
accuracy relies on the quality of both the GPS receiver and the INS device.

Pseudolites. Pseudolites are ground-based RF transmitters, transmitting either GPS-like signals or other
ranging signals at different frequencies. Both types of pseudolites can supplement GNSS by providing extra
ranging signals and an improved RF transmitter geometry and hence make precise positioning possible in
restricted areas or even indoors. Due to its potential interference with weak GPS signals, use of GPS-like
pseudolites is banned or restricted in many countries. However, pseudolites that utilize other transmitting
frequencies may not have the same limitations.

Ultra-wideband. For a user to identify which floor they are on and how close they are to a corridor or
doorway will require horizontal and vertical positioning accuracies of the order of 1 meter and 3 meters,
respectively. Clearly, it would be challenging to achieve this level of performance, reliably, with a GNSS
enabled handheld device. Even with HSGPS (or in the future HSGNSS) or A-GPS, positioning within a
multiple storey building or underground will still pose a significant challenge for UbiPos. So far, there are
only a very few successful case studies of indoor GNSS positioning and none of them have been able to
regularly and reliably deliver the required indoor positioning accuracies.

In essence, there is no apparent difference between pseudolite positioning and UWB positioning, except for
UWB positioning using higher central frequencies (> 3 GHz). The installation of a UWB positioning system
within a building consists of the 'pseudolite' infrastructure, the system controller and the user terminals.
Time difference of arrival (TDOA) or range measurements from RF transmitters are used for the
determination of the user terminal locations. UWB positioning can be used as an adjunct to GNSS for the
realization of a seamless indoor and outdoor positioning system. Research on UWB positioning, funded
under the European Commission Fifth Framework Program, revealed that it was possible to achieve a 2D
indoor positioning accuracy of better than 25 centimeters. The research also concluded that vertical
positioning accuracy required further investigation.

Other Approaches. There are other local positioning methods that can also be used to assist GNSS to
achieve the goals of UbiPos. There is always a balance between the achievable positioning accuracy and the
degree of difficulty of system integration and cost.

One very promising approach is the combination of RFID positioning with GNSS. This technology has the
potential of providing a positioning solution in certain controlled environments when there could be
significantly long periods of obscuration of the GNSS signals, and so GNSS/INS performance would be
seriously degraded. A vehicle passing through a long tunnel would be a good example of such a situation.
However, as yet there has been little published research into feasible and robust algorithms for the
integration of RFID updates with the measurements from a hybrid GNSS/INS system.

There are other emerging or rapidly evolving location sensing technologies and, indeed, some existing
positioning technologies that might find their new use for UbiPos. For example, a mobile handset can use

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several available measurements such as OTDOA (observed time difference of arrival), Cell-ID, up-link time
of arrival (TOA), angle of arrival (AOA), E-OTD (downlink enhanced observed time difference), GNSS,
eLORAN, and dead reckoning, for indoor and outdoor location purposes in many environments. Also, it is
possible to make range measurements on signals not traditionally used for positioning and navigation.
Experiments are underway utilizing, television signals, AM broadcast band signals, and other signals of
opportunity, to provide some measure of positioning capability in degraded environments. Once again, it is
the algorithms for the fusion of data from these many disparate sources, with different data quality, that pose
the major challenges for UbiPos researchers.

To achieve UbiPos, system integration and algorithm development, novel signal processing strategies, as
well as simulation and modeling are all important aspects. This is especially true under conditions of a high
degree of signal attenuation and multipath in urban areas.

Network RTK Testbed

Typically, a conventional RTK GPS systems consists of three components: a reference station on a precisely
measured ground mark, a rover receiver and a fixed radio-communication link. However, there are two
practical limitations for this configuration. Firstly, a single reference station can fail to work at anytime due
to many factors such as a power shortage or faulty hardware. Secondly, inter-station visibility is required for
the transmission of RTK corrections and the range is normally restricted by the local geographical terrain
and the power of the radio used which is limited to 0.5 watts in the U.K. With network-based real-time
kinematic (NRTK) GNSS, direct radio communications is now replaced by new technologies such as the
GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications), GPRS (General Packet Radio Service), and UMTS
(Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) cellular systems or even satellite communications, and
network reference stations of regional or even global coverage are employed. Dedicated standards or
specifications are developed for streaming geodetic data wirelessly. These form the basic elements of an
infrastructure for future outdoor UbiPos and have the capacity to deliver much improved positioning
services and accuracy due to

• 1. Significantly improved regional atmospheric models,

• 2. Fast and reliable positioning solutions due to more robust integer ambiguity resolution approaches,
• 3. Much improved mobility for the end-user receivers,
• 4. Medium (> 10 kilometers) to long distance (> 100 kilometers) precise RTK positioning,
• 5. Significant reduction in the operation fees from the end users' point of view.

It is anticipated that more new applications of NRTK GNSS could emerge in the near future.
The Ordnance Survey of Great Britain has been developing a nation-wide NRTK GNSS infrastructure,
OS Net, for a number of years. Over the last two years, the University of Nottingham and Leica Geosystems
(U.K.) have jointly established the Nottingham/Leica NRTK GPS Testbed. The network was designed to
consist of 16 permanent GPS reference stations along with additional temporary reference stations. It is the
only network GPS reference station facility in the UK established for purely scientific research purposes.

The network covers an area of some 20,000 square kilometers, in the Midlands of the U.K. Each of the 16
GPS sites comprises a single Leica GRX1200 GPS receiver with an AT504 choke-ring antenna. The 8 sites
installed by the University of Nottingham are generally on the eastern side of the network with the remaining
8 sites, installed by Leica, generally on the western side of the network, as shown in FIGURE 2. The
maximum, minimum and average inter-station separations are 102, 30, and 60 kilometers, respectively. One
consideration of the network design was to allow the investigation of the impact of different inter-station
distances and atmospheric models on the positioning accuracy, as well as the quality metrics of NRTK
GNSS. Eventually, this network will act as a testbed for various outdoor UbiPos activities. After
considerable effort, suitable locations were identified for the reference stations. For each site, inspections
were carried out, mainly to investigate the levels of multipath and any possible sources of potential RF
interference in the surrounding areas.

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Except for a reference station
network, the facility also contains two
other basic components: a control
center and the user groups. The
control center consists of a data server
which is running Leica network
processing and data management
software, GPS Spider. Through the
Internet, each site is connected to the
data server either directly or
indirectly. The real-time data received
from each reference site are in a form
of either passive datasets (a data
product passed by Leica Geosystems
from its GPS reference sites) through
an indirect connection or active data Figure 2 The Nottingham/Leica NRTK GPS Testbed network.
streams from Nottingham sites The concentric circles have radii of 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50
through a direct connection. At the kilometers.
moment, the user groups are
authorized mobile GPS receivers, including those of facility owners and the site property owners whose
activities in using this network can be justified as scientific research.

Instantaneous Error Indexing

A test (Case Study 1) was carried out on three consecutive days from July 28 to July 30, 2006, using Radio
Technical Commission for Maritime Services (RTCM)-formatted corrections from the OS Net reference
network (through the Leica Geosystems SmartNet service) and those from the Nottingham/Leica Testbed. A
wireless connection through GPRS communications was established between a mobile Leica GPS receiver
and the data server for streaming the instant network RTCM corrections. The GPS antenna was set on a
precisely measured point on the roof of the Institute of Engineering Surveying and Space Geodesy (IESSG)
building at the University of Nottingham. Real-time positioning solutions at a rate of 1 Hz were broadcast
on the Internet via a serial to Ethernet converter which connected the serial port of the GPS receiver with an
Internet port. National Marine Electronics Association (NMEA) 0183 GGA-type messages were captured
by a terminal PC running a dedicated data collection software tool through a TCP/IP connection. FIGURE
3 is a screen shot of this data logger. It can be seen that for a stationary station with NRTK GPS corrections,
real-time 3D positioning with centimeter accuracy is achievable.

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Figure 3 Interface of a TCP/IP-based data logger

Through the analysis of the recorded real-time positioning output on July 28, 2006 (using RTCM corrections
from the Nottingham/Leica Network), it was found that integer ambiguity fixed solutions were only obtained
for a period of about 24,317 samples, representing 29.3 percent of a total of 83,063 solutions. 58,566 samples
were indexed as navigation output, indicating regular failures in the wireless communication link, for some
70.5 percent of the total observation period. The remaining 180 samples were indexed as the DGPS output,
representing 0.2 percent of total solutions. FIGURE 4 shows the vertical positioning, GPS output quality
index (0=not valid, 1=GPS navigation fix, 2=DGPS fix, 3=RTK fix, 4=network RTK fix), and geometric
dilution of precision (GDOP) time series. We carried out more detailed analysis on the DGPS solutions and
found that most of these DGPS solutions were affected by an inadequate number of satellites for positioning.
Similar results were obtained when the SmartNet corrections were used. It appears that unstable wireless
connection is mainly responsible for the failure of NRTK GPS positioning and further investigation will be
carried out in future research.

NRTK GPS Facility

On December 4, 2006, a trial (Case

Study 2) was conducted using the
same GPS rover receiver, as above,
with a patch antenna installed on the
roof of a car. The same GPRS modem
was used by the GPS rover receiver to
access the RTCM corrections from
the Nottingham/Leica network and
real-time positioning solutions, at 1
Hz, were logged onto a laptop through
a serial connection. The purpose of
the trial was to test the flexibility and
mobility of the established NRTK
GPS Testbed in supporting outdoor
UbiPos activities, GPRS coverage,
GPS signal obstruction and quality
metrics of RTCM corrections. The Figure 4 Instantaneous vertical coordinate, GPS output quality (RTK) index,
trial lasted about 50 minutes and the and GDOP time series from data collected during Case Study 1

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driven distance was a little less than 45 kilometers. The roads selected for the trial included a combination
of different road segments, from private roads to a motorway, different congestion conditions and different
levels of signal obstruction. Of the total number of 2696 solutions obtained, 19 were stamped as navigation
solutions, indicating total loss of GPRS connections (that is, no RTCM corrections), 1114 were DGPS
solutions (indicating that the GPRS communication link was maintained but the number of satellites was not
sufficient for fixing carrier-phase integer ambiguities) and 1563 were indexed as integer-ambiguity-fixed
NRTK positioning solutions.

The output coordinates were imported

Figure 5 Trajectory achieved by NRTK GPS positioning during Case
Study 2
into a GIS software platform to enable
the visualization of the results, as shown
in FIGURES 5 TO 7. A Matlab script
was also developed to estimate
instantaneous road speed and travelled
distance.
From these figures, it can be seen that
road geometry has been well depicted by
the NRTK GPS positioning which may
not be achieved by a conventional RTK
GPS positioning approach due to the
inconvenience and high cost of setting up
reference stations and reliably streaming
RTK corrections to a fast moving vehicle
by a radio modem. As shown in Figures 5
and 6, the car stopped at a road junction
(controlled by traffic lights), as indicated
by A, and its positions were lost when
passing underneath the bridge of a
junction on the M1 motorway, at B.

Figure 6 Enlarged trajectory section of Figure 5

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Figure 7 Example of position gaps caused by a bridge blocking GPS
signals during Case Study 2 and how quickly the receiver can recover its
position solution in each direction

With 1 Hz sampling rate, instantaneous speed was estimated which can be further exploited to analyze
average speed on each individual road section. Since the sampling rate of this GPS positioning can be set to
20 Hz, more detailed and accurate speed and road geometry information will be provided with the support of
this NRTK GPS Testbed. This road data collection method can be used, for instance, to map the transport
network infrastructure in a very cost-effective manner with a significant improvement in positioning
accuracy, and the parameters estimated could be further used to analyze driver behavior on the road. It
should be pointed out that the data gaps in this test were mainly caused by the GPS signal obstruction when
the car went under the bridges as shown in both Figures 6 and 7. These short gaps could be easily bridged by
an associated INS integrated with the GPS receiver.

Conclusions

UbiPos is the ultimate goal of location sensing technologies. Undoubtedly, GNSS positioning will form the
kernel of UbiPos by providing incomparable outdoor positioning capacity and timing information for the
synchronization of hybrid location sensing systems indoors.

It is possible that within the next decade, with potentially four independent GNSS systems and regional
augmentations, positioning in dense urban areas or deep valleys will no longer be a problem. However,
since GNSS is not designed for positioning indoors, integration with other terrestrial indoor location sensing
systems is the only way forward for UbiPos.

A possible UbiPos system could comprise GNSS, UWB, and RFID. Such a hybrid system should be able
to deliver the required levels of consistent 3D outdoor and indoor positioning accuracy of better than 3
meters, in a cost-effective way.

Mobility, continuity, flexibility, and scalability are other important parameters for UbiPos and these
can be achieved through the construction of next generation NRTK GNSS positioning infrastructure
and wireless communications.

An integrated GPS/INS system could bridge gaps caused by unstable wireless communications. A novel
NRTK GPS/INS system is now under development.

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Acknowledgments

The Research Councils UK have awarded a fellowship to the first author for carrying out UbiPos research. The authors
would like to express their gratitude to Edina for providing Digimap for the area of the road test. Simon Mears at Leica
Geosystems, Richard Luke and Han Xiao at Anglian Water Services, John Chilton of the University of Lincoln and
Tony Marmont of Beacon Energy Ltd. supported the establishment of the Nottingham/Leica NRTK Testbed. This
article is based on a paper presented at the 2007 National Technical Meeting of The Institute of Navigation.

XIAOLIN MENG is a Research Councils UK academic fellow at the Institute of Engineering Surveying and Space
Geodesy (IESSG) of the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom, and a special professor of the Chinese
Academy of Surveying and Mapping (CASM).

ALAN DODSON is Professor of Geodesy at the University of Nottingham, and head of the School of Civil
Engineering. He has a Ph.D. degree in engineering surveying and a D.Sc. degree in engineering geodesy.

TERRY MOORE is director of the IESSG at the University of Nottingham where he is the Professor of Satellite
Navigation. He holds a Ph.D. degree in space geodesy from the University of Nottingham.

GETHIN ROBERTS is an associate professor at the University of Nottingham. He holds a Ph.D. degree in
engineering surveying from the University of Nottingham.

FURTHER READING

• Ubiquitous Positioning
"Ubiquitous Positioning Technologies for Modern Intelligent Navigation Systems" by G. Retscher and A. Kealy in The
Journal of Navigation, Vol. 59, No. 1, 2006, pp. 91-103.
"Location Systems for Ubiquitous Computing" by J. Hightower and G. Borriello in Computer, Vol. 134, No. 8, August
2001, pp. 57-66.

• Global Navigation Satellite Systems

"Algorithms for GPS Operation Indoors and Downtown"by N. Agarwal, J. Basch, P. Beckmann, P. Bharti, S.
Bloebaum, S. Casadei, A. Chou, P. Enge, W. Fong, N. Hathi, W. Mann, A. Sahai, J. Stone, J. Tsitsiklis, and B. Van
Roy in GPS Solutions, Vol. 6, 2002, pp. 149-160.

• GPS/INS Integration
"Using SmartStation and GPS Integrated with INS to Map Underground Pipes and Cables" by A. Taha, X. Meng,
G.W. Roberts, C. Hide, J.-P. Montillet in Proceedings of ION GNSS 2006, the 19th International Technical Meeting of
the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation, Fort Worth, Texas, September 26-29, 2006, pp. 2832-2840.

• Pseudolites
"A Positioning Technology for Classically Difficult GNSS Environments from Locata" by J. Barnes, C. Rizos, M.
Kanli, and A. Pahwa in Proceedings of 2006 IEEE/ION Position, Location and Navigation Symposium, San Diego,
California, April 24-27, 2006, pp. 715-721.
"A New GPS Augmentation Solution: Terralite XPS System for Mining Applications and Initial Experience" by K.R.
Zimmerman, H.S. Cobb, F.N. Bauregger, S. Alban, P.Y. Montgomery, and D.G. Lawrence in Proceedings of ION
GNSS 2005, the 18th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation, Long
Beach, California, September 13-16, 2005, pp. 2775-2788.

•Ultra-wideband
"Ultra Wide-Band Positioning as an Indoor Extension of GNSS" by S. Ingram, J.P. Sicard, E. Frazer, and D. Harmer in
Proceedings of GNSS 2003, The European Navigation Conference, Graz, Austria, April 22-25, 2003.

•Nottingham Network RTK Testbed

"Quality Measures of the Nottingham Network RTK GPS Testbed" by X. Meng, A.H. Dodson, T. Moore, G.W.
Roberts, H.-J. Euler, C. Hill, and P. Alves in Proceedings of International Symposium on GPS/GNSS 2005, Hong
Kong, December 8-10, 2005.

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