An announcement has been announced that a new positioning system has been invented that is said to be more accurate and reliable than GPS, especially in urban areas.
Researchers from Delft University of Technology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, and VSL collaborated on the prototype. Their efforts resulted in a location accuracy of 10 centimetres.
The newly developed technology may be useful in developing a wide variety of location-based applications, such as automatic vehicles, quantum communication, and the next generation of mobile communication systems.
The Global Positioning System (GPS) of the United States and the Galileo system of the European Union are both examples of global navigation satellite systems. When we rely on satellites, we accept both their capabilities and the risks associated with those capabilities. When received on Earth, their radio signals are quite faint, and accurate placement is no longer achievable if the radio signals are reflected off of structures or if they are blocked entirely by buildings.
Christiaan Tiberius, the project coordinator at Delft University of Technology, stated that “this can make GPS unreliable in urban environments, for instance,” which is a concern if we ever wish to deploy driverless vehicles. A large number of applications and navigational devices, including those used by residents and our authorities, are genuinely dependent on GPS. In addition to that, we did not have a backup mechanism up to this point.
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Super GPS
The new ‘SuperGPS’ project’s objective was to create an alternative positioning system that uses the mobile telecommunication network rather than satellites and has the potential to be more reliable and accurate than GPS. This system was to be developed in order to fulfil this objective.
Jeroen Koelemeij of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam stated, “we realized that with a few cutting-edge innovations, the telecommunication network could be transformed into a very accurate alternative positioning system independent of GPS.” “We realized that with a few cutting-edge innovations, the telecommunication network could be transformed into a very accurate alternative positioning system.”
“We have been successful in our efforts to design a system that can give connectivity in the same way that existing mobile and Wi-Fi networks do, as well as accurate positioning and time distribution in the same way that GPS does,”
Connecting the mobile network to an extremely precise atomic clock is one of these innovations. This will allow the mobile network to broadcast perfectly timed messages for positioning, similar to the way that GPS satellites do with the assistance of the atomic clocks that they carry on board.
These connections are established by utilizing the already established fiber-optic network. Erik Dierikx of VSL said, “We had already been looking into ways for our atomic clocks to send the national time to users in other places through the telecommunications network.” “We had already been investigating techniques to distribute the national time produced by our atomic clocks to users elsewhere.”
“Via these methods, we are able to transform the network into a nationally distributed atomic clock, which opens the door to a broad variety of new applications, including highly precise positioning using mobile networks.” We have now shown that a hybrid optical-wireless system works. This means that, in theory, anyone can use a wireless connection to get the national time from VSL. This was accomplished through the use of the system that we have now. In essence, it creates a radio clock that is incredibly precise and precise to the one-billionth of a second level.
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More on the GPS
The system uses radio signals with a bandwidth that is much wider than what is usually used.
Radio waves can be bounced off of buildings, which can make navigational aids less accurate. According to Gerard Janssen of Delft University of Technology, “the huge bandwidth of our system helps sort out these misleading signal reflections and therefore permits improved location precision.”
“At the same time, there is a limited amount of bandwidth available inside the radio spectrum, which makes it pricey.” To get around this problem, many radio signals with narrow bandwidths linked together and spread out over a wide virtual bandwidth are used. Because of this, only a small portion of the virtual bandwidth is actually used, and the signals can be very similar to those of mobile phones. This has the advantage of saving resources.