38 International Journal of Handheld Computing Research, 4(4), 38-51, October-December 2013
GSM-Based Positioning
Technique Using Relative
Received Signal Strength
Mohamed H. Abdel Meniem, Ain-Shams University, Cairo, Egypt
Ahmed M. Hamad, British University, Cairo, Egypt
Eman Shaaban, Ain-Shams University, Cairo, Egypt
ABSTRACT
Context-aware applications have been gaining huge interest in the last few years. With cell phones becoming
ubiquitous computing devices, cell phone localization has become an important research problem. Database
Correlation Method (DCM) is a positioning technology that based on a database of a premeasured location
dependent variable such as Received Signal Strength (RSS). DCM has shown superior in terms of accuracy.
Absolute RSS values received from a base station change with time, but the relative RSS (RRSS) values which
refer to the relations of the RSS values between different base stations are more stable. This study proposes
and implements a robust RRSS GSM-based technique for both positioning and traffic estimation. The study
was tested and analyzed in Egypt roads using realistic data and Android smart phones. The performance
evaluation showed good results. Mean positioning accuracy was about 29m in urban areas and velocity
estimation was about 1 km/h in rural areas.
Keywords:
Database Correlation Method (DCM) Localization, Fingerprinting, Global System for Mobile
Communications (GSM) Localization, Received Signal Strength (RSS), Relative Received
Signal Strength (RRSS) Localization, Rule Based Localization
1. INTRODUCTION
Locating mobile devices has always been a
critical problem. It becomes even more critical
today, as the number of context-aware applications is continuously growing. Acquiring the
location information of a mobile device allows
providing more value-added applications.
Recently Several location estimation systems
are developed. A vast majority of applications
of location estimation use the GPS satellite
system, which provides location estimates
with an accuracy of a few meters. Alternatives
to satellite-based systems are also developed
to avoid problems such as lack of coverage
between high buildings and indoors. These
techniques use signals between the mobile unit
and terrestrial transmitters or receivers. The
DOI: 10.4018/ijhcr.2013100103
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International Journal of Handheld Computing Research, 4(4), 38-51, October-December 2013 39
transmitters can be either dedicated for this
purpose or be a part of a communication system,
such as a cellular telephone network. Cellular
positioning techniques can be categorized into
terminal-based techniques and network-based
techniques. In terminal-based techniques, user
equipment (UE) receives beacons and does all
necessary processing in to order to calculate its
position. In contrast, network-based techniques
measurements are received from UE, and its
position is calculated silently.
Another alternative is Wireless-Fidelity
(WiFi). WiFi has been widely used for localization systems in several researches
and commercial efforts (Cheng, Chawathe,
LaMarca, & Krumm, 2005; LaMarca et al.,
2005; Pahlavan et al., 2010). Moreover, WiFi
technology has been used as Floating Car
Data (FCD) for traffic prediction systems
(Hendricks, Fontaine, & Smith, 2005; Hsiao &
Chang, 2005; Thianniwet, Phosaard & PattaraAtikom, 2009). VTrack ‎(Thiagarajan et al.,
2009) proved that it is feasible to accurately
estimate road travel times using a sequence
of inaccurate WiFi-based position samples.
WiFi-based localization techniques might raise
privacy concerns, especially when apply the
scan process or “War-Driving” (Sathu, 2006).
Therefore, GSM-based positioning techniques
appeared again with different implementations
that using different techniques like Cell-ID,
TA, AoA, OTD, and TDoA (Borenovic, Simic,
Neskovic, & Petrovic, 2005; Dufková et al.,
2008; Küpper, 2005; Varshavsky et al., 2006;
Wang, Min, & Yi, 2008). Cell-ID method relies
on the fact that mobile networks can identify
the approximate position of a mobile handset by
knowing which cell site the device is using at a
given time. This is usually the cell tower with
the strongest Received Signal Strength Indicator
RSSI. Such techniques require a database of
cell towers’ locations and provide an efficient,
though coarse grained localization method. In
Time Advance (TA) techniques, positioning
information is derived from the absolute time
for a wave to travel between a transmitter and a
receiver or vice versa. In Angle of Arrival AoA
techniques, mobile device can be pinpointed by
detecting the angle of arrival of its signal at two
Base Transceiver Stations BTSs. In Observing
Time Difference (OTD) and Time Difference of
Arrival (TDoA) techniques, each TDoA measurement defines a hyperbolic locus on which
the mobile terminal must lie. The intersection
of the hyperbolic loci will define the position
of the mobile device.
Many organisms now use radio fingerprinting for localization as in Chen el al. (2006).
GSM-based phones are also used in traffic
monitoring services as dynamic probes or
Floating Car Data (FCD).
This study proposes a featured positioning
technique based on Relative Received Signal
Strength RRSS. The study has been tested and
analyzed in Egypt roads using realistic data
and Android smart phones. This work is part
of EgTNS (2011); Egypt Traffic and Navigation System. The rest of this paper is organized
as follows. Section 2 gives an insight into
localization methods based on RSS. Section 3
presents traffic estimation techniques. Section
4 is describing our proposed Relative RSS
approach for accurate localization, followed
by field results and performance evaluation in
section 5. Section 6 provides a conclusion and
possible directions for future research.
2. RSS LOCALIZATION
This section surveys RSS-based localization
methods and we focus on methods that we used
for evaluating the performance of our proposed
technique.
2.1. Deterministic Fingerprinting
In a default scenario when Mobile Entity (ME)
moves around in GSM network, it is unavoidable
to traverse across different geographical areas.
To know which cell the ME should communicate
with, the ME constantly listens to the signals
sent out from the different BTSs. The signals
are measured, and at certain threshold values
of the signal strengths, the ME will decide
whether it needs to replace its serving cell and
initiate a so-called handover (HO) procedure.
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