Precision Indoor/Outdoor Personnel Location Project

Each of indoor location technologies has drawbacks. For example, enhanced GPS is currently unable to achieve the precision required for first responder location. Inertial navigation relies on gyroscopes, which must be frequently realigned. RFID systems only work in buildings where monitoring stations have been preinstalled.

In their Precision Personnel Location Project, a Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) research group has been following a different route, developing a system that employs principles from orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), which transmits high-speed data via wired and wireless channels and integrates well in the radio spectrum, along with super-resolution techniques as used in synthetic aperture radar (SAR), which can extract great detail from radar signals.

WPI’s first responder locator system will employ transmitters, to be worn by the first responders, that continuously emit customized OFDM signals. Receivers located on emergency vehicles arrayed around a building will detect and decipher the signals. The receivers will use sophisticated, custom-designed algorithms to determine their distance from the transmitters and, by sorting out a multitude of straight-line and reflected signals, determine the exact location of the transmitters in three-dimensional space.

Relation to my thesis: An indoor positioning approach with radar signals I have not aware off.