Tech Briefs Magazine - April 2024 - 40

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Impression of experiments carried out with a road vehicle, using the prototype
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40
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a problem if we ever want to use automated vehicles. Also, citizens
and our authorities actually depend on GPS for many location-based
applications and navigation devices. Furthermore,
so far we had no back-up system. "
The aim of the project, SuperGPS, was to develop an alternative
positioning system that makes use of the mobile telecommunication
network instead of satellites and that could be
more robust and accurate than GPS.
" We realized that with a few cutting-edge innovations, the
telecommunication network could be transformed into a very
accurate alternative positioning system that is independent of
GPS, " said Jeroen Koelemeij, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
" We have succeeded and have successfully developed a system
that can provide connectivity just like existing mobile and Wi-Fi
networks do, as well as accurate positioning and time distribution
like GPS. "
One innovation was to connect the mobile network to a very
accurate atomic clock to broadcast perfectly timed positioning
messages, just like GPS satellites do. These connections are
made through the existing fiber-optic network.
" We had already been investigating techniques to distribute
the national time produced by our atomic clocks to users
elsewhere through the telecommunication network, " said
Erik Dierikx, VSL. " With these techniques we can turn the
network into a nationwide distributed atomic clock - with
many new applications such as very accurate positioning
through mobile networks. With the hybrid optical-wireless
system that we have demonstrated now, in principle anyone
can have wireless access to the national time produced at
VSL. It basically forms an extremely accurate radio clock that
is good to one billionth of a second. "
" Buildings reflect radio signals, which can confuse navigation
devices. The large bandwidth of our system helps sorting out
these confusing signal reflections, and enables higher positioning
accuracy, " said Gerard Janssen, Delft University of Technology.
" At the same time, bandwidth within the radio spectrum is
scarce and therefore expensive. We circumvent this by using a
number of related small bandwidth radio signals spread over a
large virtual bandwidth. This has the advantage that only a small
fraction of the virtual bandwidth is actually used and the signals
can be very similar to those of mobile phones. "
For more information, contact K. (Karlijn) Spoor MA at
K.Spoor@tudelft.nl; +31 152-789-885.
www.techbriefs.com
Tech Briefs, April 2024
http://www.tudelft.nl http://www.techbriefs.com/tv/sapphire-xc http://www.techbriefs.com/tv/versatile-3d-printing http://www.techbriefs.com/tv/circular-economy http://www.techbriefs.com/tv/multi-robot http://www.techbriefs.tv http://www.techbriefs.com
Tech Briefs Magazine - April 2024

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