The DVB-T-based positioning system and single frequency network offset estimation

Abstract

As position information becomes more and more important in many fields of technology it is advantageous to recognize it in scenarios where satellite-based systems fail. Such a case is the scenario inside buildings where attenuation of a signal is too high making it impossible to receive despite the availability of terrestrial services. A positioning system based on terrestrial broadcasting is presented in this paper. The aim is to create an automatic receiver enabling a multi-sensor positioning system to be built and resulting in increased availability and reliability of position information. This paper introduces a method that demonstrates how to design a signal detector capable of operating in a multipath scenario. Finally, the most restrictive problem of the positioning system is the unknown time offset setting of individual emitters that render this system useless. A solution to this problem is proposed and tested in a real scenario. The innovative methods and algorithms presented in this paper show, for the first time, howto automatically evaluate position using digital video broadcasting. The result of an experiment with a real digital video broadcasting network is presented.