Enhanced Localization Technique within Urban and Indoor Environments based on Accurate and Fast Propagation Models

Most applications for location based services rely on a precise determination of the location of the mobile terminal. Especially in urban and indoor environments multipath propagation leads to very complicated scenarios without line-of-sight between the mobile terminals and the base stations. In these scenarios a localization technique based on simple delay evaluations and/or GPS is not accurate enough or even impossible. In this paper a database correlation method for the localization of mobiles in multipath scenarios is presented. The approach is based on accurate propagation models designed and utilized for the planning of mobile radio networks. The results of the propagation models during the planning process are used to define a look-up-table. By evaluating the measured path losses between the mobile terminal and the base stations and by correlating these losses with the entries of the look-up-table, the determination of the location of mobile terminals is performed.