A navigation system with an accuracy of 10 cm
Researchers from Delft University of Technology, Vrije University Amsterdam and VSL have developed an alternative navigation system that is more powerful and accurate than GPS, especially in urban environments. A working prototype demonstrating this new mobile network infrastructure has achieved an accuracy of 10 cm.
This new technology is critical to deploying a wide range of location-based applications, including autonomous vehicles, quantum communications, and next-generation mobile communication systems. The results are announced today (November 16) at Nature.
Much of our critical infrastructure depends on global navigation satellite system such as US GPS and EU Galileo. However, these satellite-based systems have limitations and vulnerabilities. Their radio signals are weak when received on Earth and cannot be accurately located if radio signals are reflected or blocked by buildings.
“This can make GPS unreliable in urban environments. This is a problem if we want to use autonomous vehicles,” said Christiaan Tiberius of Delft University of Technology and coordinator of the project. In addition, our people and government really depend on GPS for many navigation applications and navigation devices. Furthermore, so far we have no backup systems.”
The aim of the project called SuperGPS is to develop an alternative navigation system that uses mobile telecommunications networks instead of satellites and can be more powerful and accurate than GPS.
“We realized that with a few cutting-edge innovations, a telecommunications network could be transformed into a very precise, GPS-independent alternative navigation system,” says Jeroen Koelemeij of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. “We have successfully and successfully developed a system that can provide connectivity like existing cellular and Wi-Fi networks, as well as precise positioning and time distribution like GPS.”
Atomic clock
One of these innovations is the connection of mobile phone network into a very precise atomic clock, so that it can broadcast perfectly timed positioning messages, just as GPS satellites do with the help of the atomic clocks they carry on board.
These connections are made through the existing fiber optic network. “We’ve been working on techniques to distribute the national time we’ve created atomic clock to users in other places via the telecommunications network,” said Erik Dierikx of VSL.
“With these techniques, we can turn the network into a nationwide distribution system atomic clock—with many new applications such as very precise positioning over cellular networks. With the hybrid optical-wireless system we’ve demonstrated now, anyone can, in principle, have wireless access to the national time manufactured at VSL. Essentially, it forms an extremely accurate radio clock, accurate to a billionth of a second.”
Furthermore, the system uses radio signals with a much larger bandwidth than is normally used. “Buildings reflect radio signals, which can confuse navigation devices. The large bandwidth of our system helps to sort out these confusing signal reflections and enable key positioning. more accurate,” explains Gerard Janssen of Delft University of Technology.
“At the same time, the bandwidth in radio spectrum is scarce and therefore expensive. We circumvent this by using some small bandwidth involved Radio signal spread over a large virtual bandwidth. This has the advantage of being only a fraction of the virtual bandwidth actually used and the signal may be very similar to that of a cell phone.”
Jeroen Koelemeij, A hybrid optical-wireless network for terrestrial positioning at the decimeter level, Nature (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-05315-7. www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05315-7
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