Mobile station position locating system

• US 20090291694A1
• Filed: 04/30/2009
• Published: 11/26/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 05/20/2008
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Brother Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha (Brother Industries Limited)
• Original Assignee: Brother Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha (Brother Industries Limited)
• Inventors: Yano, Yoshiki, Nagai, Takuya
• Application Number:
  US12/387,249
• Publication Number:
  US 20090291694A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 455/456.5
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 5/0294 Trajectory determination or predictive filtering, e.g. target tracking or Kalman filtering
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 5/14 Determining absolute distances from a plurality of spaced points of known location
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 64/00 Locating users or terminals or network equipment for network management purposes, e.g. mobility management

Abstract

A radio wave transmitted from a mobile station 10 is received in each base station 12, and, based on the received power measured by a received power measuring portion 38 of the base station, a distance ratio calculating portion 54 of a position locating server 14 calculates the difference in the received power between the paired base stations. Based on the difference in the received power, the distance ratio is calculated between the distance from one base station to the mobile station and the distance from the other base station to the mobile station. A locus creating portion 56 of the position locating server 14 creates a locus which is a sequence of points showing positions where the calculated distance ratio is realized. The position calculating portion 58 calculates an intersection of the loci for a plurality of base station pairs, thereby calculating a candidate for the mobile station.

Claims

1. A mobile station position locating system in which a plurality of base stations receive a radio wave transmitted from a mobile station, and which estimates a position of the mobile station based on a received power of the radio wave received by each base station and a position of the base station,

wherein the mobile station includes a transmitting portion that transmits the radio wave having a predetermined frequency, and

the base stations each includes a receiving portion that receives the radio wave transmitted by the mobile station, and a received power measuring portion that measures a received power of the radio wave received by the receiving portion,

the mobile station position locating system further comprising:

a distance ratio calculating portion that calculates, based on a result of predetermined calculation of the received power measured by the received power measuring portion of each of the base stations constituting a base station pair which is a pair of the base stations, a distance ratio for every base station pair between the distance from one of the base stations constituting the base station pair to the mobile station and the distance from the other of the base stations constituting the base station pair to the mobile station,

a solution set calculating portion that calculates for every base station pair a set of solutions realizing the distance ratios calculated by the distance ratio calculating portion, and

a position calculating portion that determines a production set of a plurality of solution sets calculated by the solution set calculating portion to calculate, a solution belonging to the production set of the solution sets, as a mobile station existing position.

2. A mobile station position locating system according to claim 1, further comprising, when the position calculating portion calculates a plurality of solutions belonging to the production set of the solution sets, a position candidate selecting portion that selects the mobile station existing position, from candidates for the mobile station existing position corresponding to the plurality of solutions calculated by the position calculating portion, based on a position information of the mobile station calculated by a method different from a method used in the position calculating portion.

3. A mobile station position locating system according to claim 2, wherein the position candidate selecting portion selects, as the position of the mobile station, one of the positions calculated by the position calculating portion as the candidates for the mobile station existing position based on the information about a movable region of the mobile station.

4. A mobile station position locating system according to claim 2, wherein the position candidate selecting portion selects, as the position of the mobile station, one of the positions calculated by the position calculating portion as the candidates for the mobile station existing position based on an information about a movement history of the mobile station.

5. A mobile station position locating system according to claim 1, wherein the position calculating portion selects, as a reference base station, a base station with the highest received power measured by the received power measuring portion, to select the base station pairs as a combination of the reference base station and other base station.

6. A mobile station position locating system according to claim 1, further comprising an error rate calculating portion calculating an error rate which is an error occurring degree in the radio wave received by each of the base stations transmitted from the mobile station,

wherein the position calculating portion selects, as the reference base station, the base station with the smallest error rate calculated by the error rate calculating portion, to select the base station pair as a combination of the reference base station and the other base station.

7. A mobile station position locating system according to claim 1, wherein the position calculating portion selects, as the reference base station, the base station with the highest resolution in the received power measuring portion, to select the base station pairs as a combination of the reference base station and the other base station.