SEMINAR REPORT

ON

POSITION TRACKING AND VELOCITY

ESTIMATION FOR MOBILE
POSITIONING SYSTEM
By

Nagaraja Ballal C

DEPARTMENT OF I S ENGINEERING
N M A M INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, NITTE-574 110
2010
I
 SEMINAR REPORT
ON

POSITION TRACKING AND VELOCITY

ESTIMATION FOR MOBILE
POSITIONING SYSTEM

By

Nagaraja Ballal C

Guided by
Mr. Ashok Kumar A
(Asst. Professor, Dept. of ISE)

DEPARTMENT OF I S ENGINEERING
N M A M INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, NITTE-574 110
2010
II
 .2010

N M A M INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, NITTE-574 110

DEPARTMENT OF I S ENGINEERING

CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that the report entitled “POSITION TRACKING AND

VELOCITY ESTIMATION FOR MOBILE POSITIONING SYSTEM” has
been prepared by NAGARAJA BALLAL C in partial fulfillment of the
degree of Bachelor of Engineering in I S Engineering, during the academic
year 2010-11. To the best of my knowledge and belief this work has not been
submitted elsewhere for the award of any other degree.

Coordinator Examiner
Mr. Ashok Kumar A

Head of the Department

Prof. Yuvaraju B N

III
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I wish to express my sincere gratitude to my guide, Mr.Ashok Kumar,
Asst.Professor, Dept. of ISE, for his valuable suggestions and guidance. I am
grateful to Prof. Yuvaraju B. N., Head of the department, for his supportive
encouragement.
I am indebted to our beloved Principal, Dr S. Y. Kulkarni and the
management of NMAMIT, Nitte for having provided all facilities and helped
me in completing my seminar work.
I thank all teaching and non-teaching staff of department of ISE for their
support and help.
Finally, yet importantly, I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to
my beloved parents for their blessings, my friends/classmates for their help
and wishes for the successful completion of this work.
.

NAGARAJA BALLAL C
(4NM07IS034)

IV
 PAGE INDEX

Topic Page No.

ABSTRACT 1

1. INTRODUCTION 2

2. TOA GEOMETRIC LOCATION METHOD 5

3. POSITION TRACKING AND VELOCITY 7

ESTIMATION
3.1 KALMAN FILTERING 7
3.2 POST-KALMAN FILTER SMOOTHING 9

4. SIMULATION 10

5. CONCLUSION 15

V
FIGURE INDEX

Figure Page No.

2.1 Figure 1.THE INTERSECTION OF 6

THREE TOA CIRCLES

4.1 Figure 2.MOBILE TRACKING FROM 10

KALMAN FILTERING

4.2 Figure 3.THE ESTIMATED POSITIONS 11

AND SMOOTHED TRACK
4.3 Figure 4.THE ESTIMATED TRACKING 12
OF MOBILE STATION
4.4 Figure 5.THE ESTIMATED MOBILE 13
VELOCITY
4.5 Figure 6. THE ESTIMATED MOBILE 13
VELOCITY
4.6 Figure7 SMOOTHER VELOCITY CURVES 14

4.7 Figure7 SMOOTHER VELOCITY 14

CURVES

VI
 ABSTRACT

A method of mobile position tracking and velocity estimation for network-

based mobile positioning systems is presented.Kalman filtering is used to
process the sequences of mobile location measures obtained fiom time-of-
arrival (TOA) geometric location techniques. Two-dimensional position
tracking and velocity estimation are obtained.Simulation results show that
carefully adjusting the processing rate of Kalman filtering can reduce the
location tracking error. One post-Kalman-filter smoothing method is also
proposed for better performance of velocity estimation.

1
CHAPTER-1
 INTRODUCTION

Mobile positioning systems have received significant attention in both research

and industry over the past few years.The applications of mobile positioning in
wireless systems become essential as they play a key role in providing
location-based services, including location-based billing, intelligent
transportation systems (ITS), and the wireless emergencyservices enhanced-91
1 (E-911).
In addition to providing enhanced wireless location-based services, the
mobile location information obtained from positioning systems can be useful
in cellular system design and management, mobile location indication, and
handoff assistance. Especially in hierarchical cellular mobile communication
networks, based on the mobile speed and moving direction, the information of
mobility becomes of great assistance in efficient network resource
management and in emergency situations, allowing real-time position tracking.
The information of mobile position and velocity can also be useful in
intelligent transportation systems and in emergency situations, allowing real-
time monitoring.
Mobile positioning involves a variety of technologies,which are
generally divided into two major categories network-based and handset-based
location systems. In the past few years, a variety of positioning technologies in
both categories have been proposed and developed for position location
systems. Handset-based positioning methods require a modified handset to
calculate its own position by using a fully- or partially-equipped global
positioning system (GPS) receiver embedded in the handset. The Obvious
drawbacks of using handset-based methods are the cost of deploying new
2
handsets, and the cost of developing a suitable low-power and economical
integrated technology on the wireless communications systems. In addition, a
return data path from handset to the network for reporting the location is also
required. Nonetheless, handset-based methods usually provide more accurate
measurements than network based methods do.
Using network-based methods for mobile positioning in wireless
communications systems, however, has its advantages.The network-based
methods, as compared with handset-based methods, are less complex
whenever modifications on the systems are needed. Mobile locations are to
be calculated with additional modules on the network.Modification on the
handsets can therefore be reduced or avoided. Although network-based
methods can be used in many situations where GPS-based methods cannot be
applied,the mobile positioning in the network-based methods is generally less
accurate than that in handset-based methods.Improvement of the accuracy for
mobile positioning becomes an important issue. Network-based location
methods,to mention a few, for CDMA systems and GSM systems can be seen
in [l-7] and [8-11], respectively. In these networked-based methods, pilot or
traffic channels are usually considered for acquiring parameters related to
location measures. Signal strength, time of arrival / time difference of arrival
(TOA / TDOA) and angle of arrival (AOA) are usually measured and used in
estimating the position of mobiles.
Since the mobility of mobile stations are considered as an important
factor in designing efficient handoff algorithms and network resource
allocation methods, it becomes essential to acquire more accurate position and
velocity of mobile stations in order to provide additional value-added location-
based services, and to achieve higher system performance.
A variety of methods using signal strength, TOA or TDOA methods
3
were proposed [ 12-14]. An interacting multiple model (IMM) scheme with
several Kalman filters was used in increasing the accuracy of wireless location
[12]. The model includes signal strength, TOA and TDOA methods in the
localization algorithm. Though constant acceleration was assumed, the mobile
velocity was not included in the tracking results. In [13-14], methods of
position location and velocity estimation with signal strength measurement
were proposed. In spite of the good estimation of mobile positions, the
estimated mobile velocity seemed to have unaccepted large variations, which
may therefore hinder some applications in enhanced location-based services.
In this paper, we focus on estimating position and velocity with Kahnan
filtering, and the post-Kalman filter smoothing method. For position tracking
and velocity estimation, a sequence of mobile positions obtained from TOA
locations are simulated. In the following section, TOA geometric location
technique is first described. It is followed by the discussion of Kalman filters
and a post-Kalman filter smoothing method for position tracking and velocity
estimation.Simulation results are also presented.

4
 CHAPTER-2
TOA GEOMETRIC LOCATION METHOD

From the viewpoint of geometric location approach, timeof-arrival related to

any base station can be used to form a circle, centered at the base station. The
desired mobile station is expected to lie on the circle. Generally speaking, a
minimum of three base stations is required for determining a mobile station in
two-dimensional environments for timebased location techniques. If all of the
three TOA measures are obtained under the situation of line-of-sight (LOS)
measurement, and there exists no measurement error, the ambiguities arising
from multiple intersections can be resolved.In an ideal situation, the mobile
station should lie at the common intersection of the three TOA circles. The
measured TOA rk related to the k-th base station can be used to form the TOA
circle with radius

where c is the propagation speed of electromagnetic waveform,rk is the

propagation time from the mobile station to the k-th base station, (X, Y,) is the
location of the k-th base station, and (x, y) is the mobile position. In the case of
mobile positioning with three base stations, solving the system of three
equations will yield a single solution. However,non-line-of-sight (NLOS)
propagation errors and measurement errors with a mobile station may exist in
different three-base-station TOA scenarios. Even for a LOS situation, due to
the measurement errors, the intersection of multiple TOA circles may not yield
a single common point. The typical result is usually an enclosed small area of
uncertainty,as illustrated in Fig. 1.
5
 To solve the mobile positioning problem, methods to determine a
position, which is close to the desired mobile station, are required. Several
TOA location methods were proposed to calculate the estimated position of the
mobile station, and can be found in [15-17]. In this paper, location estimates
are obtained by using the simple location method discussed in [ 17], where the
estimated location of the mobile station (x, y) is determined by simply
choosing the center of the three intersections of the enclosed small area, as
shown as

where (xa, yo), (xb, Yb) and (xc, yc) are the coordinates of three intersections
of the enclosed small area, respectively.

Fig. 1 The intersection of three TOA circles

6
 CHAPTER-3
POSITION TRACKING AND VELOCITY
ESTIMATION

TOA geometric location method generates an estimated position of the mobile

station at any time instant. Based on the sequence of location measures,
Kalman filtering can be applied to perform location tracking and velocity
estimation for mobile positioning. Assume that a measurement of TOA at any
instant is independent of those at other time instants. The estimated position of
the mobile station at the instant is therefore independent of the estimated
positions at other time instants. For parameter estimation and tracking in two-
dimensional environments, two identical Kalman filter structures are used for
values on coordinates, x and y, respectively. The sequence of estimated
positions with respect to each axis is used as the inputs to the corresponding
Kalman filter.
Theoretically, Kalman filter provides for optimal use of any sequence of
measures, with the ability of accommodating non-stationary error sources
when the statistical behavior is known. We assume that the statistical
properties of the estimated mobile positions from TOA geometric location
methods are known on both coordinates of the two dimensional domain. We
also assume that the statistical properties of measurement noise are known. For
simplicity, Gaussian distributions are assumed for the noise sources.

3.1. Kalman Filtering

Kahnan filtering is used to perform location tracking and velocity estimation.
For each coordinate (x or y) of the two dimensional domain, we have adopted
the basic system dynamic model and Kalman filtering structure by modeling
7
the constant-velocity movement of a moving mobile station as

where T is the sample interval, x ( t j ) , ~ ( t ;a)n d jr(tj) are mobile position,

velocity and acceleration, respectively, at time instant ti. For simple notation,
the state hnction is represented as

where cDi is the state transition matrix, and w, is related to mobile movement
with state noise covariance Q, . The measurement model zi can be represented
as

where H, is the measurement sensitivity matrix, and V, is related to base

stations with measurement noise covariance R, . For the state noise and
measurement noise, we assume that E ( w,v;) = 0, for all i and j.From the
outputs of Kalman filters on both coordinates, the mobile tracks and velocity
estimation can be obtained. Although Kalman filtering has the capability of
smoothing mobile location measures obtained from TOA geometric location
methods. We have, however, noticed that the processing rate of Kalman filter
may still affect the filtering outputs. For velocity estimation, due to the
existence of measurement errors and state errors, large variations of estimated
velocity may occur when the processing rate is high. Therefore, post-Kalman
filter smoothing is proposed to improve overall behavior of position tracking
and velocity estimation.
8
3.2. Post-Kalman Filter Smoothing
A post-Kalman filter smoothing method is used for reducing the variations of
mobile velocity estimates. Instead of directly taking the values of velocity
estimates from the Kalman filter outputs as the estimated mobile velocities, we
apply a smoothing window, which covers a fixed number of the Kalman filter
output samples, for variation reduction.The smoothed value of a mobile
velocity on each coordinate,x or y, can be calculated by taking the average of
(2N + 1) velocity samples inside the window. The smoothing equation is
represented as

The performance of the post-Kalman filter smoothing is

presented with computer simulations.

9
 CHAPTER-4
SIMULATIONS

Mobile location tracking and velocity estimation with Kalman filtering method
are investigated with computer simulations. In the first scenario, three base
stations are located at coordinates (3, 2), (6.5, 5), and (1, 7) (in km). A mobile
station starting with its initial position (3.01, 5) moves rightward along the x-
axis with a constant velocity 15 m/s,and arrives at position (3.9, 5). The
estimated mobile positions are first obtained from the TOA geometric location
method. Kalman filtering is then used to find a smooth track. In Kalman filters,
the parameters R and Q are chosen to be 22,500 and 0.05, respectively. The
processing rate of samples for the Kalman filter is first chosen to be 2 sample/
s. The top figure of the simulated results in Fig. 2 shows a disorderly track.
When the sample rate is reduced to 0.5 sample/s, an improved mobile track is
observed.

Fig. 2 Mobile tracks from Kalman filtering

(Top: 2 samples/s; bottom: 0.5 samples/s)
10
In the second scenario, three base stations are located at coordinates (3, 3), (5,
6), and (1, 8) (in km). A mobile station starting with its initial position (3.01,
5) moves rightward along the x-axis with a constant velocity 15 m/s (= 54
h h r ) . When arriving at position (3.3, 5), the mobile station makes a 90-
degree turn, and move upward along the yaxis.The mobile velocity remains the
same, i.e., 15 m/s.The estimated mobile positions can be obtained by
performing TOA geometric location method. The small gray circles in Fig. 3
indicate these estimated positions. The estimated mobile positions are further
processed by Kalman filters in order to find a smooth track of the mobile
station. In Kalman filters, the parameters R and Q are chosen to be 22,500 and
0.05, respectively. The processing rate of samples for the Kalman filter is
chosen to be 0.1sample/s ..

Fig. 3 The estimated positions and smoothed track (Kalman

filter with processing rate 0. I sample/s)
From the simulated results shown in Fig. 3, a smooth curve can be obtained.
The estiqated curve is, however, far off the true track of the mobile station at
the turning comer. If the processing rate of samples for the Kalman filter is
increased to 0.5 samplels, the off-track problem around the turning comer no
11
longer exists. The estimated curve in Fig.4 is, however, not as smooth as that
in Fig. 3. There exists a tradeoff situation between the processing rate of
Kalman filtering and the smoothness of the estimated track results.

Fig. 4 The estimated track of the mobile station (Kalman

filter with processing rate 0.5 samplek)

As far as mobile velocity is concerned, the estimated results of velocity

obtained directly from Kalman filters with processing rates 0.1 and 0.5
sample/s on the coordinates x and y are shown in Figs. 5 and 6, respectively. It
can be seen that when the processing rate is 0.1, the response of filtering to the
velocity change of mobile is slow. If the processing rate is increased from 0.1
to 0.5 sampleds, the filtering response to the velocity change is improved, but
the estimated velocities show large fluctuations.If we use the post-Kalrnan
filter smoothing method with N=10 to process the raw velocity in Fig. 6,
smoothed velocity curves can be obtained, as shown in Fig. 7. To reduce the
response time to velocity changes, the second post-Kalman filter smoothing
method with N=5 is tested.The results in Fig. 8 show a significant
improvement on the response time. The fluctuations in the raw values of
velocity estimates from Kalman filters are also reduced.
12
Fig. 5 The estimated mobile velocity (Kalman filter with
processing rate 0.1 sample/s)

Fig. 6 The estimated mobile velocity (Kalman filter with

processing rate 0.5 sample/s)

13
Fig. 7 Smoothed velocity curves of those in Fig. 6 (with the
post-Kalman filter smoothing; N=I0)

Fig. 8 Smoothed velocity curves of those in Fig. 6 (with the

second Post-Kalman filter smoothing method; N=5)

14
 CHAPTER-5
CONCLUSIONS

A mobile location tracking method with Kalman filter is presented for position
tracking and velocity estimation. The mobile location estimates are obtained
from TOA geometric location technique. Kalman filtering and post-Kalman
filter smoothing methods are used to process the sequence of location
estimates for position tracking and velocity estimation.It can be seen that by
carefully adjusting the processing rate of Kalman filtering, smooth location
tracks can be obtained. The post-Kalman-filter smoothing method further
improves the velocity estimation and the smoothness of the mobile track.
 15

BIBLIOGRAPHY

[1] J. Caffery, Jr., "A New Approach to Geometry of TOA Location," IEEE
VTS Fall VTC 2000, 52nd, vol. 4, pp. 1943-1949,2000
.

[2] J. Lee and H. KO, "Tracking of Mobile Phone Using IMM in CDMA
Environment," IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and
Signal Processing,vol. 5, pp. 2829-2832,2001.

[3] Yangseok Jeong, et al, "A wireless position location system using forward
pilot signal,'' IEEE 51st Vehicular Technology Conference, VTC 2000-Spring
Tokyo,vol. 2, pp. 1354-135'7,2000.

[4] M.-S. Lee and C.-D. Wann, "Geometrical Positioning with TOA for
Wireless Location Systems," 2001 Cross-Strait Wireless Technologies
Conference,Chang-Hua, Taiwan, November 200 1.
16