RESEARCH ACTIVITIES :
Our mission statement for 'Location Innovation' activities is clear:
“Accurate, low-cost, scalable location determination for all Mobile Terminals”
Research Activities for 'Location Innovation' within HW have been applied to provide a number of key solutions within several application sectors, targetted at governmental, commercial and consumer solutions. These research activities are highlighted below:
• Enhanced GSM-based Cellular positioning
 Our solutions for Enhanced GSM-based Cellular positioning utilise our technical expertise within RF propagation, Reinforced learning and Probabilistic context-aware motion models; - and combines this with 1m resolution Digital Elevation/Terrain Maps (DEM/DTM) and High Performance Cluster (HPC) computational power to provide a highly accurate solution for location determination, based upon Received Signal Strength Indications (RSSI) observed on the Mobile Terminal/Phone. Please see HW's iPOS^N and POS^N+ products for further details.
• Bluetooth / W-LAN positioning
 Our activities have concentrated upon the privision of accurate Bluetooth/W-LAN location determination without the need for extensive, repetitive training; providing a technology enabler for:
• Remote monitoring of the location of assets and people in real-time
• Providing alerts to appropriate personnel in situations requiring attention
• Providing historical tracking data to optimise operational processes
• GNSS Augmentation and Redundancy within positioning
 GNSS is inefficient for indoor use or in urban areas where high buildings block the satellite signals. Hence, augmentation is required and is conventionally achieved through the use of relatively low cost Inertial Navigation Systems (INS). However, INS has two fundamental issues:
• Cost and complexities of installation due to its inherent susceptibility to vibration.
• Incremental loss of accuracy.
HW is active in the development of hybrid strategies to augment GNSS, targeting positioning within Urban Canyons for the Vehicle Telematics application sector. Our focus has been augmentation through the use of GSM Cellular infrastructure which can seamlessly integrate into COTS On-Board Units (OBU).
• Identification of vehicle occupancy levels
 The mobile phone is the one asset which we take with us almost everywhere. When it’s with us, it’s generally on. According to the Mobile Data Association (MDA), there are currently 62 million operational mobile phones in the UK alone; hence, the opportunity is now available to utilise this RF device for applications which are required to reach a large demographic representation.
Our activities for Identification of vehicle occupancy levels utilises the mobile phone, and identifies membership functions to assign probabilities associated with sequential passenger movement patterns before, throughout and after a journey. This highly innovative approach to vehicle occupancy identification and application is being explored within HW led UK Technology Strategy Board (TSB) funded project OccuTek.
• Transmitter Device Location Identification (TDLI)
 Most of our activity outlined in this brochure has been focused at the identification of mobile terminal location, based upon probabilistic algorithms and reasoning concepts where the location of fixed transmitters (Base stations/Access Points) is known. However, it is also possible to use our algorithms in reverse. TDLI both (i) identifies the presence of a transmitter, and (ii) locates the transmitter.
The solution may be applied to different communication frequencies, and Feasibility studies have validated a high level of accuracy (CEP P50 3m) for 'less conventional' bandwidths (such as VHF).
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