The current evolution of the Internet of Things (IoT) and Smart Cities, together with the proliferation in the last years of cloud platforms where storage and processing of data can, ideally, be handled on demand, has boosted the appearance of new applications and services in the positioning domain of potential interest for specific use cases.
In particular, the processing in the cloud of GNSS signal snapshots can be of interest when targeting a gain in terms of power consumption or computational burden, offloading the local device or chipset from the full GNSS processing. Moreover, cloud processing allows the application of complex or advanced positioning or navigation solutions that require a high computational burden, or depend on the usage of heavy assistance information (e.g. radio and magnetic fingerprinting maps, detailed 3D maps, etc.). And, of course, new positioning applications or processing techniques can be derived from, or take advantage of, the crowd-sourced and/or cooperative processing of the GNSS signal snapshots and other sensor data gathered by the low-end devices connected to the Internet. Some of the potential applications and techniques based on the concepts of cooperative navigation and cloud processing have undergone preliminary studies. Nevertheless, the maturity of the topic is relatively low, with few applications covered so far, and multiple techniques and applications of high potential interest, still to be studied and assess in detail.
Following on from previous studies on Peer-to-Peer which have been performed in the ESA TRP program, the activity shall study and develop new innovative positioning and navigation techniques relying on the exploitation of crowd-sourced data and GNSS signal snapshots from low-end sensors or devices connected to the Internet, enabled by high-data-rate and low-latency wireless communication networks, and based on the cooperative and cloud-processing of the data.

The tasks to be performed will include:

• study, design and performance assessment of snapshot-based and cooperative cloud-processing of GNSS signals based on signal snapshots grabbed with low-end devices and other crowd-sourced data of interest for different use cases;
• studying potential crowd-sourced data and/or signals of potential interest to be exploited for the improvement of the positioning solution (e.g., in terms of sensitivity, robustness, accuracy) or of interest to generate assistance information to be exploited later in the cloud, like fingerprinting maps (of any type);
• study and design a flexible architecture for a concept demonstrator based on the exploitation in the cloud of the signal snapshots and data gathered by a network of sensors or devices, based on existing wireless communications infrastructures and commercial cloud processing platforms;
• implementation and preliminary demonstration of the proposed techniques and cloud architectures, and quantification of the benefits provided for different use cases of interest;
• mapping of technological solutions/enablers and use cases, and derivation of conclusions and recommendations for future activities.

The results of the study will provide guidance for planning future activities including further studies, testing and proof of concept activities possibly integrated with follow-on tests from other activities
Provisions will be taken so that results and/or test equipment can also be made available for follow-on R&D activities of EC/EUSPA.