Cooperative Mobile Positioning<em> </em>(COMET)

The use of the Global Positioning System (GPS) for location of mobiles has been applied in 3G. However, the introduction of mobile handsets with built-in GPS receivers leads to an increased cost, size, battery consumption, and a long time for a full market penetration. Furthermore, the location estimation accuracy obtained by the GPS degrades in urban and indoor environments, which actually represent the greatest interest of cellular network providers and service providers in general. In this project, we propose a positioning system that exploits the cooperation among neighboring mobiles in a cellular ad-hoc network. Thanks to the exploitation of their spatial proximity and their spatial diversity, we will show that our proposal has the potential to enhance the location estimation accuracy with respect to conventional terrestrial and satellite positioning systems, thus representing a possible global solution to the mobile localization problem. Also, it can stimulate the creation of a new range of services: cooperative location-based services.