POSITION ESTIMATING APPARATUS, POSITION ESTIMATING METHOD, AND COMPUTER PROGRAM PRODUCT

• US 20130143597A1
• Filed: 08/24/2011
• Published: 06/06/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 09/09/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Sony Corporation (Sony Group Corp.)
• Original Assignee: Sony Corporation (Sony Group Corp.)
• Inventors: Mitsuya, Koshiro, Shionozaki, Atsushi
• Granted Patent: US 9,210,539 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 455/456.1
• CPC Class Codes: G01C 21/28 with correlation of data from several navigational instruments
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 5/14 Determining absolute distances from a plurality of spaced points of known location
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/02 Services making use of location information
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 64/00 Locating users or terminals or network equipment for network management purposes, e.g. mobility management

Abstract

An apparatus, method and computer program storage device cooperate to provide a quality position estimation of a mobile communication device by determining a reference area. The reference area includes the position of the mobile communication device as well as a plurality of transmitters. Transmitters that are detected as being outside of the reference area are excluded from contributing to the position estimate. The reference area is centered at a standard position, which may be a previous position or a GPS based position, for example. The range of the reference area includes a component that considers the range of a transmitter, as well as a GPS error or an estimated move distance of the mobile communication device.

Claims

1. A position estimation apparatus, comprising:

a reference area determining unit determines a reference area that includes a position of a mobile communications station, and

a position estimation unit that estimates the position of said mobile communication station based on position information of a plurality of transmitters within said reference area.

2. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein:

said reference area determining unit determines said reference area by combining an estimated move distance of said apparatus with a predetermined communication range of at least one of said plurality of transmitters.

3. The apparatus of claim 2, further comprising:

a movement detector that estimates the estimated move distance of said apparatus.

4. The apparatus of claim 3, wherein

said movement detector being an accelerometer.

5. The apparatus of claim 1, further comprising:

a GPS-based location device that detects location information based on wireless satellite transmissions, wherein

said reference area determining unit determines the reference area by combining a GPS uncertainty amount with a predetermined communication range of at least one of said plurality of transmitters.

6. The apparatus of claim 1, further comprising:

a computer readable storage device that stores a previous position estimation result for said apparatus in association with time, wherein and said reference area determining unit determines said reference area by using the previous position estimation result as a standard.

7. The apparatus of claim 6, wherein:

said reference area determining unit determines the reference area by calculating the estimated move distance.

8. The apparatus of claim 6, wherein

said position estimation unit estimates the move distance by measuring a propagation distance from the plurality of transmitters.

9. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein

said position estimation unit excludes from consideration transmitters outside of the reference area based on signal information from respective of said plurality of transmitters.

10. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein

the position estimation unit estimates the position of the mobile communication station by calculation of

11. The apparatus of claim 9, wherein

further comprising a computer readable storage unit that stores transmitter reliability information regarding whether a particular transmitter has been detected as having a low reliability with at least a predetermined frequency of occurrence, and

said position estimation unit excludes transmitters having a stored reliability below a predetermined threshold when estimating the position of the mobile communication station.

12. The apparatus of claim 9, wherein

said position estimation unit excludes transmitters having a received signal characteristic indicating the transmitter is outside of the reference area.

13. The apparatus of claim 1, further comprising:

a communications interface that receives transmitter signal information and reference area information from said mobile communication station, and sends an estimate of said position of said mobile communication station to said mobile communication station.

14. The apparatus of claim 1, further comprising:

the mobile communication station.

15. A position estimation method comprising:

determining with a processing device a reference area including a position of a mobile communications station; and

estimating the position of the mobile communication station based on position information of a plurality of transmitters within said reference area.

16. A computer readable storage device having computer readable instructions that when executed by a processing device perform a position estimation method comprising:

determining with the processing device a reference area including a position of a mobile communications station; and

estimating the position of the mobile communication station based on position information of a plurality of transmitters within said reference area.

17. A mobile communications station comprising:

a receiver that receives transmissions from a plurality of transmitters;

a reference area determining unit that determines a reference area that includes therein a position of the mobile communications station; and

a communication interface that sends signal information from said transmissions of said plurality of transmitters, and

said reference area to a remote device,

and receives from said remote device an estimated position of said mobile communication station after said remote device used said signal information and reference area to estimate said position of said mobile communication station by using transmissions from a subset of said plurality of transmitters located within said reference area and excluding transmissions from a subset of said plurality of transmitters located outside of said reference area.

18. A position estimation method comprising:

receiving transmissions from a plurality of transmitters;

determining with a processing device a reference area that includes therein a position of the mobile communications station;

sending signal information from said transmissions of said plurality of transmitters to a remote device;

sending said reference area to the remote device; and

receiving from said remote device an estimated position of said mobile communication station after said remote device used said signal information and reference area to estimate said position of said mobile communication station by using transmissions from a subset of said plurality of transmitters located within said reference area and excluding transmissions from a subset of said plurality of transmitters located outside of said reference area.

19. A computer readable storage device having computer readable instructions that when executed by a processing device perform a position estimation method comprising:

receiving transmissions from a plurality of transmitters;

determining with a processing device a reference area that includes therein a position of the mobile communications station;

sending signal information from said transmissions of said plurality of transmitters to a remote device;

sending said reference area to the remote device; and

receiving from said remote device an estimated position of said mobile communication station after said remote device used said signal information and reference area to estimate said position of said mobile communication station by using transmissions from a subset of said plurality of transmitters located within said reference area and excluding transmission from a subset of said plurality of transmitters located outside of said reference area.