Demo: ShadowMaps, the urban phone tracking system

Abstract

Due to frequent non-line-of-sight (NLOS) signal reception, geopositioning using Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), such as GPS, is unreliable in urban environments, with errors on the order of tens of meters. This poses a major problem for mobile services that benefit from accurate urban localization, such as navigation, geofencing, and hyperlocal advertising applications. Mobile network operators also seek improvements in localization, as government regulators increase handset location accuracy requirements of enhanced 991 service (e911). In our demonstration, we will present the most recent prototype of our urban location improvement technology, called ShadowMaps, which will be shown to accurately track a mobile device in an urban environment, with up to an order of magnitude reduction in GNSS positioning error.