Practical Network-Based Techniques for Mobile Positioning in UMTS

This paper presents results of research on network-based positioning for UMTS (universal mobile telecommunication system). Two new applicable network-based cellular location methods are proposed and assessed by field measurements and simulations. The obtained results indicate that estimation of the position at a sufficient accuracy for most of the location-based services does not have to involve significant changes in the terminals and in the network infrastructure. In particular, regular UMTS terminals can be used in the presented PCM (pilot correlation method), while the other proposed method the ECID+RTT (cell identification + round trip time) requires only minor software updates in the network and user equipment. The performed field measurements of the PCM reveal that in an urban network, 67% of users can be located with an accuracy of 70m. In turn, simulations of the ECID+RTT report accuracy of 60m–100m for 67% of the location estimates in an urban scenario.