Designing a High-Accuracy, High-Coverage

Carrier-Independent Location Solution

301 North Whisman Road

Mountain View, CA 94043 USA
Tel:

+1 (408) 492-8900

Fax:

+1 (408) 492-1853

info@polariswireless.com

July 2012

www.polariswireless.com

Emergency Services

Location-based Services

Location Surveillance

Problem Statement
There are many network-based and handset-based location technologies available today. However, most of them suffer
from either accuracy or coverage limitations. For example, Assisted Global Positioning System (A-GPS) only works in
open sky conditions where there is line-of-sight to satellites, and does not provide high-accuracy location in dense urban
and indoor scenarios. Many network-based technologies are able to provide high accuracy and global coverage, and are
often used in hybrid with handset-based methods to provide the most comprehensive solution, as shown in figure 1.

Figure 1: Positioning Technologies and Performance

Todays Smartphones provide an excellent platform for implementing these location methods since they are devices
which are a) always on, and b) in periodic communication with some type of network (Macro or WLAN). Most
Smartphones possess auxiliary sensors (e.g. accelerometers) whose measurements improve the accuracy of the final
location fix. This convergence of multiple measurements and location estimates also makes Smartphones ideal devices
for maintaining the complete location solution.
The positioning protocols that are in use today, or planned for use in the near future (see SUPL 3.0 LPPa) provide
significant flexibility over the types of measurements that can be conveyed to a server and thus support a variety
positioning methods. However, one shortcoming is in carrier-independent deployments. In these cases the positioning
2 | 2012 Polaris Wireless. | All rights reserved. | Confidential

server cannot rely on the wireless network infrastructure to inform it of network changes. Such changes may include the
addition of new cell sites, or changes to the physical identification of the base station which, if undetected by the position
server, will degrade accuracy. This is particularly important with indoor positioning, where GNSS methods, which dont
rely on terrestrial measurements, often fail to generate a location fix. Such positioning approaches include Radio
Frequency Pattern Matching (RFPM) and, a subset of RFPM OTDOA (Observed Time Difference of Arrival). These
methods require detailed knowledge of the location of base stations, their corresponding physical ID, and in the case of
OTDOA, the eNB configuration used to support the position specific reference signals. Initial estimates of these items can
be arrived at through surveys. The positioning system must react and reflect those changes in the position estimates it
provides.
Thus a new architecture is proposed which leverages information that the handset or user equipment (UE) has about the
network in addition to the measurements typically used for positioning. This information can be in the form of neighbor
lists or associations it has made between, for example, the ECGI and physical ID, or even OTDOA assistance data that
has been gathered during control plane positioning sessions. Furthermore, crowd-sourced methods producing accurate
location estimates (e.g. AGNSS) can help in the discovery of Wi-Fi access points as well as in the maintenance of RFPM.
The positioning server uses all this information to maintain the various databases. When making a position estimate it
draws on those measurements which it deems most reliable given both the approximate location of the UE along with the
given state of the underlying databases to produce a hybrid positioning estimate.
An example of this approach is detailed in a high level architecture in Figure 2. The two major elements in the location
system are the UE and location server itself. A user plane protocol (modeled after SUPL 3.0 due to its broad
measurement support and flexibility) is used to exchange information between the two entities. In Figure 2, an example
message flow is shown between the two entities highlighting a mobile originated location request. In this flow, the server
requests information from the device that includes historical and current measurements (signal strengths, AGNSS pseudo
ranges, Wi-Fi measurements, sensors, etc.) along with network information, such as neighbor lists. The set of historical
measurements allows the location server to enhance the accuracy by incorporating tracking algorithms and, equally
important, allows for the location server database to be refined with better crowd-sourced predictions. The network
information provided by the UE allows the location server to detect changes in the configuration so it can react
accordingly. The historical information recorded by the UE can be from measurements it already has available (idle mode
measurements, Wi-Fi scans, etc.) so that there is no impact on battery life. Several modes of operation will be supported
(e.g. network-assisted and UE-assisted).

UE
Location Function

Measurement /
Location History

Location Request

Location Server

Measurement/Network/
History Information
Request

Network Change
Manager

Measurement Response
Location Response

Location
Processor

Crowd-Sourcing
Processor

Network
Information

Prediction / WiFi
Database

Figure 1: High Level Architecture

3 | 2012 Polaris Wireless. | All rights reserved. | Confidential

Location Server Features

1. Advanced SUPL 3.0 support in the application processor allowing automatic retrieval of historic measurements and
locations.
2. Use of hybrid location methods (RFPM/Wi-Fi/GNSS)
3. Automatic error correction in the Location Server database using crowd-sourced methods
4. Advanced RFPM location techniques to improve location accuracy and robustness
5. Intelligent delivery of assistance data to UE for UE based locates (e.g. local Wi-Fi / Short Range Node database)

The Polaris Wireless Advantage

Polaris Wireless has significant IP and experience in developing location algorithms with specific focus on RFPM.
Polaris Wireless has developed sophisticated propagation models to build and maintain the RFPM and Wi-Fi
databases
By building in advanced support for SUPL 3.0 in the chips will allow Intel systems to outperform competition, both in
terms of accuracy and time to fix in all environments. Also, this will be possible without significant load to the network.
It is possible that this will allow better device management and power conservation.
The Polaris Wireless carrier-independent solution will allow new use cases for phones with these chips inside:
o Find my phone
o Efficient use of Network Resources
o Help with Network optimization

4 | 2012 Polaris Wireless. | All rights reserved. | Confidential