Part one: The Statistical Terminal Assisted Mobile Positioning methodology and architecture

Statistical Terminal Assisted Mobile Positioning (STAMP) is a methodology that improves the accuracy of existing positioning techniques by exploiting measurements collected at the terminal side. STAMP is setting a unified positioning framework, in which different types of raw network related measurements are employed by multiple positioning techniques in order to derive coarse position estimates. Subsequently, statistical processing is performed to further increase accuracy. STAMP is complementary to satellite positioning systems, while the proposed architecture is highly applicable to User Plane location architectures. Due to its open and modular architecture, new positioning algorithms and post processing techniques can be added in the localization chain, thus supporting effectively a wide variety of Location Based Services (LBS). The implementation of STAMP in a prototype focuses particularly on Quality of Position issues and compatibility with currently available and up-coming standards and communication protocols. Preliminary results using actual network measurements, in both Greece and Finland, reveal the efficiency of STAMP. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.