What is indoor positioning? It is the ability to locate people or objects in a building using a mobile device such as an iPhone (News - Alert) or tablet. This information is vital in situation such as natural disasters and other unforeseen occurrences.
NextNav has announced that the final specification for its 3GPP Release 13 will include messaging support for Terrestrial Beacon System (TBS) location technologies, including the Metropolitan Beacon System (MBS).
The company has adopted MBS for its nationwide deployment, which is a “terrestrial constellation” bringing Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) positioning performance to indoor and urban environments where satellite-based positioning is either unavailable or degraded.
“We are gratified, after an especially intensive effort, to see 3GPP add support for Terrestrial Beacon Systems generically and for supporting the NextNav implementation of it – the Metropolitan Beacon System,” said Ganesh Pattabiraman, President, COO and Co-Founder, NextNav.
By standardizing the core network information flow in 3GPP, support for MBS will become available across any release 13-compliant LTE (News - Alert) network platforms. This is similar to previously standardized GNSS systems such as GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou and Galileo satellite signals.
“This speaks to the urgent market requirements for ubiquitous, high-quality indoor positioning. MBS availability as an international standard ensures that our location signals can be used in widely-deployed LTE networks as part of an end-to-end system,” said Pattabiraman. “It also opens the doors for multi-vendor systems, a critical consideration for our carrier customers and users worldwide.”
The MBS signal technology is available under “Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory” terms, and multiple silicon vendors. It is also available to core network element providers that are integrating the technology into their platforms.
NextNav has been deploying the Metropolitan Beacon System (MBS) position technology across the U.S. to allow mobile phones and other devices to reliably determine their location in indoor and urban environments where GPS signals can’t be received. This system provides accurate horizontal positioning with floor-level height precision. The system is delivered over a managed network on licensed spectrum, with the assistance of carrier-grade dependability and metropolitan-wide coverage.