CSR, Navizon Debut Indoor Location and Navigation Systems
December 1, 2011 By: Tracy Cozzens GPS WorldIn November, two companies unveiled indoor location positioning systems.
CSR, Plc. demonstrated its indoor location and navigation system at the Locations & Beyond Summit in San Francisco in November. CSR’s SiRFusion location platform and SiRFstarV architecture are scheduled to become available in 2012. The company calls the system a self-learning, end-to-end platform that “fuses” multiple location technologies for accurate indoor location and navigation.
Navizon Inc. also has a new system: the Indoor Triangulation System (I.T.S.). Navizon is the creator of Navizon-One, a global positioning system combining GPS, Wi-Fi, and cellular signals.
SiRFusion. CSR demonstrated its new system with a smartphone, one of the target devices for the new tech. Instead of relying solely on GPS to determine position, the SiRFstarV architecture gathers real-time information from GPS, Galileo, GLONASS, and Compass satellites, multiple radio systems such as Wi-Fi and cellular, and multiple MEMS sensors, like accelerometers, gyros and compasses. It then combines this real-time information with ephemeris data, mapping, cellular base-station and Wi-Fi access point location data and other cloud-based aiding information using the SiRFusion platform.
The company reports that until now, using Wi-Fi technology required several seconds to provide a single indoor position fix, which also had relatively low accuracy and a high degree of variability (jitter). By combining real-time Wi-Fi and satellite positioning information, pedestrian dead reckoning (using MEMS sensors), and crowdsourced location and aiding data from a cloud-based server, SiRFusion technology is able to achieve the rapid and more accurate indoor position fixes needed to make continuous indoor navigation a part of everyday life.
“Unlike many other systems that require manual surveys to build and maintain an indoor Wi-Fi and cellular location database, the CSR Positioning Center (CPC) cloud-based server is able to receive anonymous and voluntary location information wirelessly from users’ devices, even indoors, to improve the database,” said Dave Huntingford, director of Product Management for the Mobile Business Area at CSR.
SirFusion pulls data from the cloud.
Navizon I.T.S. Navizon I.T.S. provides for room-level indoor location by tracking the location of all Wi-Fi enabled smartphones, tablets, and laptops in real time without requiring the installation of an app on the device. The location determination is performed by small Navizon devices called “nodes.” Navizon’s I.T.S. nodes are located within 100 feet of each other covering a three dimensional area, such as a multi-story building or multi-building campus.
According to Cyril Houri, founder and CEO of Navizon, “No wiring or complicated set-up is necessary. The nodes are strategically arranged to ensure reliable triangulation and plug into an electrical outlet for power, automatically configuring into a wireless network.”
Once a node network is in place, Navizon I.T.S. constantly computes the locations of all Wi-Fi enabled devices in the area and securely delivers them as a cloud service to the network owner. The location of wireless devices can either be displayed on a browser window with Navizon’s user interface or accessed via an Application Programming Interface.
While the Navizon I.T.S. can monitor movement or traffic patterns, no personal information transmits over the system and identity privacy remains intact. Organizations such as hospitals that need to know the location of its employees can choose to enable an identity feature.
Sample Navizon I.T.S. floor plan.
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