Another interesting company using alternative technologies for determining location seems to be getting some traction. Rosum, founded by James Spilker, the co architect of GPS, announced a new licensing and joint development partnership with Intel yesterday where Intel will help market and distribute the Rosum technology.
Spiker and fellow GPS co-architect Dr. Brad Parkinson, a Rosum board member, are well aware of GPS’s limitation, particularly with dense urban and indoor environments, and created Rosum to address those limitations.
According to the company’s marketing, “Traditional positioning systems are satellite-based and were designed for outdoor applications. However, they have limitations indoors, in obstructed areas or difficult urban environments. TV signals are plentiful, powerful, low and diverse in frequency, and easily penetrate walls, automobiles, and city buildings, making them optimal for urban-area and indoor positioning applications.”
Spiker and fellow GPS co-architect Dr. Brad Parkinson, a Rosum board member, are well aware of GPS’s limitation, particularly with dense urban and indoor environments, and created Rosum to address those limitations.
According to the company’s marketing, “Traditional positioning systems are satellite-based and were designed for outdoor applications. However, they have limitations indoors, in obstructed areas or difficult urban environments. TV signals are plentiful, powerful, low and diverse in frequency, and easily penetrate walls, automobiles, and city buildings, making them optimal for urban-area and indoor positioning applications.”
The Rosum module integrates with Global Locate’s Hammerhead A-GPS chip, however in this case the “assistance” is provided by server based positioning information about the location of nearby television towers, rather than cell tower typically used in A-GPS.
The system requires monitoring units in the geographic area being covered to send data about the areas broadcast signal to a location server, the location server then sends location aiding information to the device via either SMS or GPRS. The Rosum module on the mobile device receives signals and send information information back and forth to the server to help determine location.
It looks as though for the moment at least Rosum is targeting the technology toward the government as a fail safe system for back up to GPS. The location information for broadcast tv transmitters is controlled by the FCC and the TV-GPS technology not only meets the FCC E911 Phase II specifications but 50% of their tests were conducted indoors as compared to the recommended 5%.
This technology for indoor positioning seems promising, at least on paper. It may be better than some of the existing positioning using cell towers that can only give a very coarse position, and it may also have a larger coverage grid than Wi-Fi positioning. However, the seemingly large amount of communications required with the network may create a barrier to this technology gaining traction as a mass market alternative for non emergency uses.
Eng Hua Yap/Ben Allen
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If anyone who is interested in more details about this technology, a quick search on Google yield the patent submission by Rosum.
http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/wo.jsp?wo=2003075630&IA=WO2003075630&DISPLAY=DOCS
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