New Positioning Alternative for IOT Applications using Cloud-based Snapshot Technologies

Last Updated: 12/12/2022 10:02     Created at: 09/12/2022 15:51

Final Presentation of NAVISP Project EL2 053 now available:

On Friday, December 02, 2022, CGI presented the results of the NAVISP project “Remote Snapshot Positioning On Server (ReSPOnSe)”.

GNSS receivers are widely used throughout society as a common source of reliable positioning in the location-based services market. Although the market for GNSS receivers is already highly developed and mature, one of the drawbacks of this type of processing is that it requires a relatively large amount of power to process the positioning and timing signal, while at the same time the need for seamless, ubiquitous, low-power and trustworthy/reliable positioning is constantly increasing. In the coming years, this will lead to an increased demand for ultra-low-power, lightweight, autonomous, and secure positioning systems. The emerging cloud-based (server) snapshot-based positioning approach, which is still at a relatively early commercial stage compared to conventional GNSS receivers, is a promising candidate that may be able to meet these requirements and provides sufficient room for improvement that could potentially shape the market toward the next generation of GNSS receivers.  Snapshots are short recordings of the radio-frequency spectrum, potentially shorter than 100 milliseconds. The snapshots contain the navigation signals in sampled and quantised form. The snapshots are then forwarded to a cloud server, where the signals are processed by a snapshot processing application, and a position is determined.

In this context, the project’s main objective was to develop a novel Remote Snapshot Positioning On Server, called ReSPOnSe. For this purpose, a GNSS snapshot processing software was developed capable of being integrated in a cloud-based snapshot receiver infrastructure. The project transformed the conventional GNSS receiver architecture into a more reliable and mature snapshot-based receiver approach that overcomes the power consumption limitations of conventional GNSS receivers and enables to build small and autonomous tracking devices that only need to acquire the GNSS spectrum and send it to a central processing server to be processed into valuable information for the user.

Thanks to the support from NAVISP, the company was able to develop an innovative snapshot processing application that improves the performance of ReSPOnSe in terms of accuracy, precision and robustness by adding a number of algorithms to the existing version. In addition, the collaboration with NAVISP allowed the company to expand its GNSS team and develop new points of contact in the Netherlands and possible collaborations with other companies in the field.

The next steps are now to further increase modularity to enable customization of ReSPOnSe while preparing additional demonstrators for potential customers. In addition, a pilot integration is planned as the next step. 

The project was part of NAVISP Element 2, which aims at maintaining and improving the capabilities and competitiveness of the participating States' industry in the global market for satellite navigation and, more broadly, PNT technologies and services.

More detailed information can be found in the slides of the Final Presentation.