Assisted global navigation satellite system for indoor positioning

• US 9,063,208 B2
• Filed: 06/07/2012
• Issued: 06/23/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 06/07/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Stratacache Limited
• Original Assignee: Walkbase Oy (STRATACACHE Products, Inc.)
• Inventors: Wuoti, Tuomas, Sjlund, Bjrn, Jern, Niclas, Nyman, Gabriel
• Primary Examiner(s): Phan, Dao
• Application Number:
  US13/491,555
• Publication Number:
  US 20130328725A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,111 Days
• Field of Search: 342/357.21, 342/357.25, 342/357.42, 342/457, 342/458, 342/463, 455/456.1, 455/456.2
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 3/02 using radio waves
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 5/02521 using a radio-map
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 64/00 Locating users or terminals or network equipment for network management purposes, e.g. mobility management
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 84/12 WLAN [Wireless Local Area Networks]

Abstract

A method and a system for accurately positioning an electronic device located in an indoor area, generates a request signal for determining the indoor location of the device, and sends the signal to a server coupled to the device through a network. The request signal contains certain parameters pertaining thereto, including the signal strength, and the information of the cell towers through which the device sent the signal. The server uses the signal parameters to determine information pertaining to an approximate spatial position of the device, and sends and information to the device. Multiple positioning algorithms are embedded in the computing hardware of the device, and the device executes these algorithms to determine the exact indoor location thereof.

Claims

1. A method of determining the spatial position of an electronic device located in an indoor area, the method comprising:

sending a request signal through the electronic device, for determining the spatial position of the electronic device, to a server arrangement, through a plurality of cell towers and a wireless network, the request signal containing information related to the cell towers and parameters pertaining to a strength of the request signal;

receiving the request signal at the server arrangement;

processing the received request signal in the server arrangement and matching the information and parameters of the received request signal to stored spatial coordinates and generating spatial coordinate data from the spatial coordinates pertaining to the spatial position of the electronic device; and

communicating the spatial coordinate data to the electronic device, and using the electronic device to process the spatial coordinate data for determining the spatial position by matching the spatial coordinate data to indoor location data stored in the electronic device, wherein the determined spatial position is an indoor location obtained from the indoor location data, wherein the electronic device is further configured to;

generate an information set that comprises the spatial coordinate information of the indoor location and one or more of a building number, a house number, a list of companies nearby and advertisement information.

2. A method of claim 1, wherein the request signal contains a received signal strength indicator pertaining thereto.

3. A method of claim 1, further comprising, using Wi-Fi localization technique by providing fingerprinting data corresponding to the wireless network, to the server, and using the finger printing data to generate spatial position of the device.

4. A method of claim 1, wherein server arrangement is a cloud server arrangement.

5. A method of claim 1, further comprising, using a set of pre-determined algorithms embedded within the electronic device, to process the data and to determine the spatial position.

6. A method of claim 1, further comprising, continuously maintaining a log of the data sent to the electronic device, in a database of the device.

7. A method of claim 6, wherein the sent data includes a timestamp, specifying the time of generation of the data.

8. A method of claim 1, further comprising, generating the request signal based on movement of the device by a pre-determined threshold distance, within the indoor area.

9. A method of claim 1, further comprising sending the request signal through a non-constant uplink communication service.

10. An electronic device having a computing hardware, and a software application stored in the computing hardware, the software application being executable on the computing hardware to implement the method of claim 1.

11. A software product recorded on a machine readable data storage medium, the software product being executable on the computing hardware of a computing device, for implementing a method of claim 1.

12. A method of claim 1, wherein the electronic device is one of a mobile phone, a smart phone, an iPad and a personal digital assistant.

13. A method of claim 1, wherein the electronic device is a wireless communication device.

22. An electronic device which is operable to implement a method of claim 1, the device being a desktop computer, a laptop computer, an iPad, or a smart phone, including an iPhone®

, an Android®

phone or a Symbian®

phone.

14. A system comprising:

an electronic device located within an indoor area, and configured to generate a request signal corresponding to determination of a spatial location of the electronic device;

a server coupled to, and in wireless communication with the electronic device, through a wireless network, the server being configured to;

receive the request signal, the request signal containing information pertaining to parameters of the request signal;

process the signal to generate spatial coordinate data pertaining to the spatial location of the electronic device by matching the request signal to a stored spatial coordinate, and send the spatial coordinate data to the electronic device, wherein;

the electronic device includes a set of pre-determined algorithms embedded in a computing hardware thereof, the electronic device being operable to execute the algorithms, after receiving the spatial coordinate data and match the spatial coordinate data to an indoor location from a list of indoor locations stored in the device, to determine the spatial location thereof and generate an information set that comprises the spatial coordinate information of the indoor location and one or more of a building number, a house number, a list of companies nearby and advertisement information.

15. A system of claim 14, wherein the signal parameters include a received signal strength indicator pertaining to the signal.

16. A system of claim 14, wherein the server is a cloud based server.

17. A system of claim 14, wherein the electronic device has a set of pre-determined algorithms embedded in a computing hardware thereof, the device being configured to use these algorithms to process the data and determine the spatial position.

18. A system of claim 14, wherein the electronic device is configured to generate the request signal based on the movement of the device by a pre-determined threshold distance within the indoor area.

19. A system of claim 14, wherein the electronic device is one of a mobile phone, a smart phone, an iPad, and a personal digital assistant.

20. A system of claim 14, wherein the server is coupled to a location database, and is configured to search the location database for the location coordinates of the device, in response to receiving the request signal.

21. A system of claim 14, wherein an indoor location database containing information pertaining to indoor locations proximal to different location coordinates, is coupled to the server, and the server is configured to search the indoor location coordinates of the device, in response to receiving the request signal.