Magellan Beacon

Magellan Beacon

The cheapest and most precise way of determining the location of an object is to use visible radio waves or infrared light, for example emitted by lasers. Indoors, however this is unfortunately limited to use in a single room, hangar or open space, since light will not go through walls or other obstacles.

Radio signals are reflected on basically everything including walls, floors, ceilings, furniture, and all other kinds of obstacles. It is quite certain that a signal will never travel in a straight path from transmitter to receiver. Furthermore, the same signal will reach the receiver several times following different paths. This propagation phenomenon is called multi-path.

In any digital radio communication system, multi-path can cause errors and affect the quality and speed of communications, when signals having followed different paths - and therefore being out of sync - interfere. In a locating system, it is quite a problem not knowing the path followed by the received signal.

It is possible to simulate signal propagation with computer models to determine the probable paths, but an accurate simulation requires the integration of every little detail of furniture and the building structure that can interfere with the signal, and cannot realistically be achieved.

Another problem in a building is the noise generated by electronic devices such as cell phones, CRT screens, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi devices. Radio location systems using low frequency, which are less disturbed by noise and obstacles could give the best results. However, they require expensive measuring equipment.

Another way of building a simple location system is placing beacons all over the building. A beacon can be anything that identifies the location uniquely, like an infrared or ultrasonic transmitter. One example of such a system is the Cricket Indoor Location System developed at the MIT. A large number of beacons are required, which limits both the area that can be covered and the attainable granularity.

All in all, radio systems are those that will provide the best compromise between cost, versatility, ease of use and accuracy, although specific techniques and algorithms will need to be used to overcome the effects of multi-path and noise.

Chun Lin is a GPS geek focusing on GPS, Google Earth, cell phone tracker apps and GPS tracking.

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