High-performance ESA receiver brings satnav indoors

Satellite navigation is having an enormous impact on our daily lives. In practical terms it means the only place left to get lost is indoors, where satnav signals fail to reach. But one ESA project is changing that. The DINGPOS (Demonstrator for Indoor GNSS Positioning) project combines a highly-sensitive receiver capable of picking up GPS and Galileo signals indoors with additional positioning methods. These include accelerometer and gyroscope sensors, local WiFi-based positioning and ‘map-matching’ – associating available location data of its user in terms of a computer model of the building concerned, like a character moving through a video game.

“Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signals are intended for outdoor use of course,” said David Jimenez-Baños, overseeing one of two DINGPOS contracts for ESA. “They can pass through windows and walls however – depending on the material used – though the signals are hugely attenuated. Our receiver is 10 decibels more sensitive than the best commercially available equipment, meaning it can detect GNSS signals that are 10 times weaker.”

Initially the DINGPOS system is envisaged as serving emergency services, with other applications under consideration for the longer term. A pair of consortia – one led by IFEN in Germany in partnership with UFAF, AUDENS and Telespazio and the other led by GMV in Spain and Portugal in partnership with TAS-F, UAB, ADI and Saphirion – are developing and testing separate platforms in parallel.

The DINGPOS project is supported through ESA’s Basic Technology Research Programme (TRP), and builds on previous Agency research, with both consortia exploiting technology originally patented by ESA within this field.

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