Poor positioning performance in dense urban areas is a major obstacle to the practical realisation of new technologies such as navigation for the visually impaired, tracking people with chronic medical conditions, augmented reality, advanced lane control systems for vehicles and advanced railway signalling systems. The Global Positioning System (GPS) provides metres-level positioning in open environments. However in dense urban areas, buildings block, attenuate, reflect and diffract radio signals, limiting the real-time positioning accuracy to 10-50m when enough signals can be received to calculate a position. Other radio positioning technologies are typically no more accurate, while position obtained from dead reckoning degrades with time. Optical techniques developed by the robotics community are more suited to some applications than others and are still undergoing research to make them more reliable and efficient. Using the new global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) constellations (i.e., GLONASS and, in future, Galileo and Compass) in addition to GPS improves the availability of satellite-based positioning in urban areas. However, to improve the accuracy, a new approach to positioning is needed and the increasing availability of 3D mapping provides an opportunity to achieve this. The aim of this project is thus to improve the accuracy of real-time mobile positioning in urban areas to within a few metres by combining multi-constellation GNSS with 3D mapping, a concept known as intelligent urban positioning. By exploiting knowledge of the surroundings provided by 3D city models and rebuilding the positioning algorithms from the bottom up to make use of all available information, a step change in positioning performance can be achieved, unlocking the potential for a host of new positioning applications. This research will build on UCL's track record of innovation in urban positioning, including the development of a brand new GNSS positioning method known as shadow matching. This project will investigate new ways of using 3D mapping to aid ranging-based GNSS positioning and then combine this with shadow matching to obtain the best overall position solution. Testing will be conducted under a wide range of scenarios to assess how the performance varies as a function of the urban environment, the class of GNSS user equipment used and the characteristics of the 3D mapping. Finally, context detection algorithms will be developed to determine when the positioning system is in an environment suitable for the algorithms developed under this project and when it is in an environment where conventional GNSS algorithms or an indoor positioning technique should be deployed instead. By improving the accuracy and reliability of urban positioning, a successful outcome of this project would unlock the potential for many new applications that can both contribute to the economy and provide solutions to societal problems, while improving the reliability of many existing technologies. Positioning technology that can determine the correct side of the street and identify adjacent buildings is a key component of automated guidance for visually impaired pedestrians. More accurate emergency caller location and tracking of people with chronic medical conditions enables response teams to arrive more quickly. Augmented reality will benefit from a more efficient overlaying of information on the surrounding environment. Researchers mapping patterns of air pollution or wheelchair accessibility in cities will be able to quickly and cheaply geolocate information to within a few metres. More reliable identification of traffic lanes and railway tracks will support the development of advanced intelligent transport systems. Route guidance for visitors to cities, location of friends and business associates in complex or crowded urban environments, and location-based advertising will also benefit.

Over the past three decades the US GPS (Global Positioning System) has evolved from a system designed to provide metre-level positioning for military applications to one that is used for a diverse range of unforeseen, and mainly civilian, applications. This evolution has been both driven and underpinned by fundamental research, including that carried out at UK universities, especially in the fields of error modeling, receiver design and sensor integration. However, GPS and its current augmentations still cannot satisfy the ever increasing demands for higher performance. For instance there is insufficient coverage in many urban areas, it is not accurate enough for some engineering applications such as the laying of road pavements and receivers cannot reliably access signals indoors.However things are changing rapidly. Over the next few years the current GNSSs (Global Satellite Navigation Systems) are scheduled to evolve into new and enhanced forms. Modernised GPS and GLONASS (Russia's equivalent to GPS) will bring new signals to complement those that we have been using from GPS for the last 30 years. Also we will see the gradual deployment of new GNSSs including Europe's Galileo and China's Compass systems, so leading to at least a tripling of the number of satellite available today by about 2013 - all with signals significantly different from, and more sophisticated than, those used today.These new signals have the potential to extend the applications of GNSS into those areas that GPS alone cannot satisfy. They will also enable the invention of new positioning concepts that will significantly increase the efficiency of positioning for many of today's applications and stimulate new ones, especially those that will develop in conjunction with the anticipated fourth generation communication networks to provide the location based services that will be essential for economic development across the whole world, including the open oceans. This proposal seeks to undertake a number of specific aspects of the research that is necessary to exploit the new signals and to enable these new applications. They include those related to the design of new GNSS sensors, the modeling of various data error sources to improve positioning accuracy, and the integration of GNSSs with each other and with other positioning-related inputs such as inertial sensors, the eLORAN navigation system, and a wide rage of pseudolite and ultra-wide band radio systems. We are also seeking to find new ways to measure the quality of integrated systems so that we can realistically assess their fitness for specific purposes (especially for safety-critical and legally-critical applications). As part of our work we will build an evaluation platform to test our ideas and validate our discoveries.The proposal builds on the unique legacy of the SPACE (Seamless Positioning in All Conditions and Environments) project, which was a successful EPRSC-funded research collaboration framework that brought together the leading academic GNSS research centres in the UK, with many of the most important industrial organisations and user agencies in the field. The project laid the foundation for an effective, long-term virtual academic team with an efficient interface to access industry's needs and experience. The research proposed here will be carried out within a new collaboration framework (based on SPACE) involving four universities (UCL, Imperial, Nottingham and Westminster) and nine industrial partners (EADS Astrium, Ordnance Survey, Leica Geosystems, Air Semiconductors, ST Microsystems, Thales Research and Technology, QinetiQ, Civil Aviation Authority and NSL). The industrial partners have pledged almost 2M of in-kind support and the proposed management structure, led by one of the industrial partners, is carefully designed to foster collaboration and to bring to bear our combined facilities and resources in the most effective manner.

Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.