Development of a low-cost positioning system using GNSS signal processing and LPWA nodes

Abstract

The Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) has long been employed in positioning especially in outdoor environments with limited use in indoor applications because GNSS signals are too weak to penetrate buildings and unable to provide reliable indoor positioning. Hence, GNSS’s inability to work in the indoor environment invites extensive research and development of other means which could achieve communications in the indoor setting like the use of Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, ZigBee, Sigfox, and LPWAN. An indoor positioning system (IPS) allows an object to be located and tracked within an indoor environment. With the introduction of the Internet of Things (IoT), the business interest in locationbased applications and services has also increased. Hence, the demand for accurate indoor localization services have become important, this project aimed at developing a low-cost positioning system using GNSS signal processing and transmitting the pseudo ranges using LPWAN nodes (LoRa Modules) to enable real-time communication of data over long distances of about 20-30 km for both indoor and outdoor scenarios. In this project, LoRa was chosen for transmitting pseudo-ranges because of its long range of communication, low power consumption, and low cost of connectivity. For the methodology, the NEO-6M GPS module was used to collect the GNSS data, it was then transmitted over a required distance of about 10km using the E32 LoRa node, and MATLAB was used to analyze the data. The circuit was simulated in Proteus and built on a Vero board. Arduino UNO software was used to program the microcontroller Atmega328P chip.