Emerging Directions in Wireless Location: Vista from the COMET Project

In this paper, we give an overview of the emerging directions in wireless location according to the Cooperative Mobile Positioning (COMET) project. The latter proposes innovative solutions for the fourth generation (4G) mobile localization, which directly originate from investigating the impact of cooperation among heterogeneous terminals in hybrid cellular ad-hoc networks. Besides launching a promising new branch of wireless location, the main focus of COMET is on the design of the required protocols (link layer) and algorithms (clustering, positioning and tracking) that would support what we regard as a cooperative mobile positioning system. Moreover, in order to highlight the practical potential of our findings, we will also implement a demonstrator in a WLAN 802.11b/g network environment, where a real-time indoor navigation application will run on a group of heterogeneous wireless devices.