Thread: Technical questions about GPS

Originally Posted by Neil

............
I doubt that you'll get any meaningful help here for tracking anyone like you want.

Originally Posted by Ricky239

You misunderstood me. I tend to designing an social college apps which including locations of the students. By the way, i appreciate your reply with much sincere.

Yes I certainly did misunderstand your intentions and rather badly. My apologies and thanks for your polite understanding. Maybe catymag has now also misunderstood you but in a lesser and kinder way , whereas before i think she was on the 'right track' because the apps she mentioned above [and others such as loci etc] i suspect will not give you the super-fine location 'pin-point' accuracy of 'people moving from a table to another in a canteen'. The lead she gave you earlier for Indoor Positioning is probably more to your needs. Afaik, those IPSs can rely on one or more methods of 'triangulation' such as limited-strength wireless networks [WLAN and BT], mobile tower network signals [GSM, 3G, 4G], magnetic and inertial [INS] for fine location and tracking as well as GNSS [GPS etc] and including GPRS, AGPS, DGPS for coarse location.

I now think you are wanting to design and build your own software application for this purpose and want to use GPS-type tracking as the principal indoor location method. Even making use of a SBAS [commonly know as 'WAAS' worldwide but actually usable only in NA] will not give you the fine locating you desire, and in any case i don't think any of those current systems such as WAAS, EGNOS, MSAS etc are usable in Malaysia and regardless the best available will only give about 3 metre accuracy anyway outdoors. Local Area Augmentation Systems [LAAS] involves dedicated fixed ground stations 'correcting' GPS signal errors and distortions but are primarily used for aircraft landing system instrument approaches [IFR] and give better positioning where a large discrepancy is intolerable, particularly vertically]. In short, I don't think any or all GNSS [GPS, GLOSNAS and/or upcoming Gallileo, BeiDou etc] even if enhansed with SBAS/LAAS will be anywhere near sufficient for your purposes, especially indoors when used solely.

So, because you are only looking to locate and track ppl in the confined local situation of your college campus, I think you should look to IPS for your primary location/tracking method as first suggested by catymag. Here's other couple of links:

Code:

Please Login or Register to see the links

As for your campus floor plan, maybe you could get access to the original building plans/site plans or even look to Google maps who are now creating maps for shopping malls and other large public complexes for use with their own IPS. Nokia are also into the act with a BT 4.0 based method of ppl navigating their way around shopping malls and large buildings such as IKEA megastores. If those giants succeed to make it workable quickly and extend it to all public buildings and complexes and also include 'opt-in' tracking, your intended self-developed campus-specific app might be redundant quite quickly perhaps.