An Indoor and Outdoor Positioning System using a Hybrid Approach

Abstract

Continuous proliferation of modern handheld devices in recent years has increased importance of location information. It is due to the increasing number of location-based services; however, determining location of a device or object has some issues as well. For instance, location-aware applications require location or positioning information of the devices on continuous basis, however it becomes sometimes very difficult to achieve this goal due to the underlying positioning technology (e.g. global positioning system (GPS) provides location information very well only for outdoor applications). We advocate that by integrating GPS with other indoor positioning technologies will enhance the effectiveness and scope of location-based services/applications. In this paper, we are presenting such a system that integrates GPS and GSM/GPRS technologies to determine the location of objects in both indoor and outdoor environments.