Time to timestamp: opportunistic cooperative localization from reception time measurements

Abstract

We present a general framework for improving and extending GNSS-based positioning by leveraging opportunistic measurements from legacy terrestrial radio signals. The proposed approach requires only that participating nodes collect and share reception timestamps of incoming packets and/or other reference signals transmitted by other fixed or mobile nodes, with no need of inter-node synchronization. The envisioned scheme couples the idea of cooperative GNSS augmentation with recent pioneering work in the field of time-based localization in asynchronous networks. In this contribution we present the fundamental principles of the proposed approach and discuss the system-level aspects that make it particularly appealing and timely for Cooperative ITS applications, with the goal of motivating further research and experimentation in this direction.