Statistical terminal assisted mobile positioning technique

Mobile terminal positioning has attracted the interest of mobile communications industry as it enables the provision of commercial applications and emergency services. An innovative method for improving the accuracy of existing terminal positioning techniques is proposed. The proposed method relies on the terminal ability to measure and store a set of location-related parameters while in idle mode. At the initiation phase of a location-based service, the whole set of stored data is statistically processed so as to increase the accuracy of terminal position estimation. The efficiency of the suggested method is demonstrated in a GSM network for Enhanced Global Cell Identity technique by using network measurements. In the sequel, the proposed method is further analysed on the basis of a simulation model, which highlights key parameters such as the optimum number of samples that needs to be stored by the terminal and the proper sampling period. The proposed method requires only additional software at the terminal and the network which implies a reasonable deployment cost.