IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS Editor-In-Chief

Precise point positioning with quad-constellations: GPS, BeiDou, GLONASS and Galileo

An inventive method provides for control of a seismic survey spread while conducting a seismic survey, the spread having a vessel, a plurality of spread control elements, a plurality of navigation nodes, and a plurality of sources and receivers. The method includes the step of collecting input data, including navigation data for the navigation nodes, operating states from sensors associated with the spread control elements, environmental data for the survey, and survey design data. The positions of the sources and receivers are estimated using the navigation data, the operating states, and the environmental data. Optimum tracks for the sources and receivers are determined using the position estimates and a portion of the input data that includes at least the survey design data. Drive commands are calculated for at least two of the spread control elements using the determined optimum tracks. The inventive method is complemented by an inventive system.

Marine seismic survey method and system

Change detection and deformation monitoring is an active area of research within the field of engineering surveying and other overlapping areas such as structural and civil engineering. This paper reviews the application of terrestrial laser scanning in the monitoring of structures and discusses registration and georeferencing of scan data. Past terrestrial laser scanning research work has shown trends in addressing issues such as accurate registration and georeferencing of scans, error modelling, point cloud processing techniques for deformation analysis, scanner calibration and detection of millimetre deformations. However, several issues are still open to investigation such as robust methods of point cloud processing for detecting change and deformation, incorporation of measurement geometry in deformation measurements, design of data acquisition and quality assessment for precise measurements and modelling the environmental effects on the performance of laser scanning. A three-stage process model for ...

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A review of the use of terrestrial laser scanning application for change detection and deformation monitoring of structures

Current access infrastructures are characterized by heterogeneity, low latency, high throughput, and high computational capability, enabling massive concurrent connections and various services. Unfortunately, this design does not pay significant attention to mobile services in underserved areas. In this context, the use of aerial radio access networks (ARANs) is a promising strategy to complement existing terrestrial communication systems. Involving airborne components such as unmanned aerial vehicles, drones, and satellites, ARANs can quickly establish a flexible access infrastructure on demand. ARANs are expected to support the development of seamless mobile communication systems toward a comprehensive sixth-generation (6G) global access infrastructure. This paper provides an overview of recent studies regarding ARANs in the literature. First, we investigate related work to identify areas for further exploration in terms of recent knowledge advancements and analyses. Second, we define the scope and methodology of this study. Then, we describe ARAN architecture and its fundamental features for the development of 6G networks. In particular, we analyze the system model from several perspectives, including transmission propagation, energy consumption, communication latency, and network mobility. Furthermore, we introduce technologies that enable the success of ARAN implementations in terms of energy replenishment, operational management, and data delivery. Subsequently, we discuss application scenarios envisioned for these technologies. Finally, we highlight ongoing research efforts and trends toward 6G ARANs.

Survey on Aerial Radio Access Networks: Toward a Comprehensive 6G Access Infrastructure

Recent advances in ubiquitous positioning systems for mobility applications

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, distance learning had to be increasingly implemented at universities, and more e-learning formats had to be applied. The LBS2ITS project carried out under the lead of the Department of Geodesy and Geoinformation at TU Wien (TUW), Austria, came at the right time for these tasks. Education in Location-Based Services (LBS) is put to a new level including interactive e-learning and Problem-Based Learning (PBL) pedagogy. In the courses modernization, special attention is paid to the development and/or update of the courses to be implemented with these two pedagogic forms. Thus, teaching with an emphasis on learning outcomes is a central theme in the LBS2ITS project. To achieve this goal, the active verbs used in updated Bloom’s taxonomy for teaching on learning outcomes, i.e., remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating, are applied to achieve the six levels of thinking and the active nature of learning. LBS2ITS will build a fully immersive and integrated LBS teaching and learning experience with the LBS application of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) in mind. The outcome will be an innovative digital learning environment supporting synthetic and real-world PBL learning experiences. In the course of the project, a workshop for introduction of these new developments was held. This paper provides an insight into the results and experiences from this workshop. As e-learning and PBL must be combined and integrated nowadays, the new term PBeL (Problem-Based e-Learning) is proposed and introduced in this paper. The development of this approach and background information on the theory and the LBS2ITS project are presented.

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PBeL—A Novel Problem-Based (e-)Learning for Geomatics Students

Measures of both precision and reliability are nowadays used to assess the quality of positioning a seismic spread offshore. Precision is related to positioning uncertainties due to random measurement errors of source and receiver groups and is measured by means of standard deviations and error ellipses. However, reliability is a measure of the ease with which biases (gross measurement errors) may be detected (internal) and the impact of undetected biases on the source and receiver position (external). This paper describes a method for the rigorous assessment of reliability within an integrated navigation approach. The method is tested with real multi-streamer positioning data.

Reliability assessment of positioning for seismic acquisition and processing at sea

The rapid growth in the technological advancements of the smartphone industry has classified contemporary smartphones as a low-cost and high quality indoor positioning tools requiring no additional infrastructure or equipment. In recent years, the fine time measurement (FTM) protocol, achieved through the Wi-Fi round trip time (RTT) observable, available in the most recent models, has gained the interest of many research teams worldwide, especially those concerned with indoor localization problems. However, as the Wi-Fi RTT technology is still new, there is a limited number of studies addressing its potential and limitations relative to the positioning problem. This paper presents an investigation and performance evaluation of Wi-Fi RTT capability with a focus on range quality assessment. A set of experimental tests was carried out, considering 1D and 2D space, operating different smartphone devices at various operational settings and observation conditions. Furthermore, in order to address device-dependent and other type of biases in the raw ranges, alternative correction models were developed and tested. The obtained results indicate that Wi-Fi RTT is a promising technology capable of achieving a meter-level accuracy for ranges both in line-of-sight (LOS) and non-line-of-sight (NLOS) conditions, subject to suitable corrections identification and adaptation. From 1D ranging tests, an average mean absolute error (MAE) of 0.85 m and 1.24 m is achieved, for LOS and NLOS conditions, respectively, for 80% of the validation sample data. In 2D-space ranging tests, an average root mean square error (RMSE) of 1.1m is accomplished across the different devices. Furthermore, the analysis has shown that the selection of the bandwidth and the initiator–responder pair are crucial for the correction model selection, whilst knowledge of the type of operating environment (LOS and/or NLOS) can further contribute to Wi-Fi RTT range performance enhancement.

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Testing and Evaluation of Wi-Fi RTT Ranging Technology for Personal Mobility Applications

Abstract. Despite the availability of GNSS on consumer devices enabled personal navigation for most of the World population in most of the outdoor conditions, the problem of precise pedestrian positioning is still quite challenging when indoors or, more in general, in GNSS-challenging working conditions. Furthermore, the covid-19 pandemic also raised of pedestrian tracking, in any environment, but in particular indoors, where GNSS typically does not ensure sufficient accuracy for checking people distance. Motivated by the mentioned needs, this paper investigates the potential of UWB and LiDAR for pedestrian positioning and tracking. The two methods are compared in an outdoor case study, nevertheless, both are usable indoors as well. The obtained results show that the positioning performance of the LiDAR-based approach overcomes the UWB one, when the pedestrians are not obstructed by other objects in the LiDAR view. Nevertheless, the presence of obstructions causes gaps in the LiDAR-based tracking: instead, the combination of LiDAR and UWB can be used in order to reduce outages in the LiDAR-based solution, whereas the latter, when available, usually improves the UWB-based results.


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Vassilis Gikas

Papers

Recent advances in ubiquitous positioning systems for mobility applications

PBeL—A Novel Problem-Based (e-)Learning for Geomatics Students

Reliability assessment of positioning for seismic acquisition and processing at sea

Testing and Evaluation of Wi-Fi RTT Ranging Technology for Personal Mobility Applications

A comparison between uwb and laser-based pedestrian tracking