The software that phones use to determine your location generally has a margin of error of a few meters. UK-based start-up Naurt claims that their software can pinpoint your location to as much as 20 centimeters.
Almost every telephone contains software that processes signals from so-called global navigation satellite systems (GNSS), such as the American GPS and the European Galileo. However, there is a margin of error of a few meters in that location determination.
“We’ve developed the world’s first platform that can reduce this margin of error without requiring additional hardware,” said Jack Maddalena, Naurt’s CEO. The company claims that their positioning is accurate to within a few tens of centimeters.
Reinforced GNSS, which can provide an accuracy of a few millimeters, has long been used for some professional purposes. However, for this extra accuracy you have to use extra transmitters. That makes this enhanced GNSS expensive. In addition, it can take several minutes to calculate such an accurate location.
Satellites
Naurt’s technique does not require any special equipment. They use software that minimizes the margin of error in the spatial position of the GNSS satellites.
Although we know the position of the satellites fairly accurately, a number of factors throw a spanner in the works. For example, the radio signals from the satellites can be slightly delayed when they are disturbed in the upper layer of the atmosphere, called the ionosphere. There are also small deviations in both the orbit and the clocks of the satellites.
Naurt uses specific locations on Earth to calibrate. It compares these coordinates to the GNSS determinations of these locations. An algorithm then calculates the margin of error in each satellite signal. That margin of error can then be used to make any other position determination a lot more accurate. Corrections are made for both systematic and arbitrary margins of error.
Although the software gets the data for these calculations from the internet, it doesn’t require a continuous internet connection to calculate a precise location. “We have online and offline options,” says Maddalena.
For every device
According to him, the software increases the accuracy by 40 to 90 percent, but there is still room for improvement. ‘On average, GNSS can be 30 meters off. We can reduce this to an average of 20 centimetres,’ says Maddelena.
Previous software improvements such as those from France’s Geoflex claim to achieve similar results, but Geoflex only works on select Android phones. The new software works on every device.
“There are many variants of these algorithms, from different companies, but this variant can achieve a real-time positioning accuracy of about 10 centimeters,” said navigation expert Michael Jones of Roke Manor Research, a British communications company. He does point out that experimental data is needed first to prove specific claims.
car rental
More precise positioning can allow vehicles to automatically recognize parking bans and speed limits. In addition, it can help self-driving cars stay in the right lane.
Another possible application is with car rental companies. Here the software can direct the customers to the exact location of a vehicle.
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