Accurate geographic tracking of mobile devices

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-2016238692-A1
Application number	US-201615041405-A
Country	US
Kind code	A1
Filing date	Feb 11, 2016
Priority date	Feb 13, 2015
Publication date	Aug 18, 2016
Grant date	—

Abstract

A tracking system is described having at least two mobile transmitter/receivers (“transceivers”) which sense and respond to at least one tracking transceiver. The signals sent to and received from the mobile transceivers are analyzed to get a distance (range) that each is from the tracking transceiver. This can be converted into a position relative to the mobile transceivers. If there are enough transceivers, and at least one knows its absolute location, the absolute location of the mobile transceivers may be determined. Existing smartphones, cellphones, Wi-Fi routers, Bluetooth devices, and near-field devices that have on-board processors, can be modified to run executable code to implement the current invention. They may communicate using at least one of the modalities for tracking. These may be implemented in tracking the position and orientation of moving devices, such as a head-mounted display for virtual/Augmented Reality, automobiles, packages in a package delivery truck. The system may also be implemented to identify and keep track of the last known location of various objects.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1 . A system for tracking mobile devices in real time comprising:
a multifrequency transmitter, said transmitter transmitting identification and position information of the transmitter, a mobile device comprising:
a user display that provides images to a user as viewed from a specified viewpoint,
at least two mobile display antennae mounted on the display adapted to receive signals from the multifrequency transmitter;
a receiver circuit having a carrier recovery circuit that functions to synchronize the signals received by each wireless, compare their phases and determine phase differences; and
a processor running coupled to the receiver circuit, adapted to run executable code to:
receive the phase differences from the receiver circuit;
calculate the distance from a multifrequency transmitter to each antenna based on phase differences; and
calculate the position of each antenna based on the calculated distances, and causing the images provided to the user to have viewpoint based upon the calculated positions of each antenna.

2 . The system of claim 1 , wherein the carrier recovery circuit comprises:
a delay locked loop; and a phase comparator for determining a phase difference of the signals received by each antenna.

3 . The system of claim 1 , wherein the receiver circuit comprises:
an amplifier circuit; a down-converter; and an analog-to-digital converter (ADC), that samples the signal into digital data and sends the digital data to a processor.

4 . The system of claim 1 , wherein the processor runs executable code to de-spread the signal using a particular pseudo-noise (PN) sequence code.

5 . The system of claim 1 , wherein the processor utilizes parallel digital filters to separate the multi frequency components of the received signal into a plurality of separated signals to determine the phase of at least two separated signals and compare them using a differential phase comparator.

6 . The system of claim 1 , further comprising:
a second multifrequency RF transmitter, wherein the mobile device calculates the position of the second RF multifrequency transmitter based on phase difference of arrival of the multifrequency signals received at the mobile display antennae and the known separation of the mobile display antennae.

7 . The system of claim 6 of the previous claim wherein the second transmitter is an RFID transmitter that receives and retransmits multifrequency signals from the display.

8 . The system of claim 7 , wherein the transmitter and display receiver utilize ultra-wideband communication to determine time of arrival for distances between the transmitter and mobile display antennae.

9 . A system for tracking the location of movable objects comprising:
a plurality of transceivers being one of the group consisting of: Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, cellular and near field transceivers, each transceiver having:
a transmitter capable of transmitting an RF signal; and
a receiver capable of receiving an RF signal;
a processor capable of running prestored executable code causing a requesting transceiver to:
broadcast a signal requesting nearby transceivers to transmit a signal back which includes an identifier of the transceiver;
determine a range from each corresponding transceiver;
calculate, from the plurality of received signals, a location of the requesting transceiver.

10 . The system of claim 9 wherein:
the range from the transceiver is calculated from the round-trip travel time of the signals received from that transceiver.

11 . The system of claim 9 wherein:
at least some of the transceivers are stationary, are referred to as nodes, and have a predetermined known location.

12 . The system of claim 10 wherein:
at least some of the transceivers are not stationary, are referred to as mobile transceivers and calculate their locations.

13 . The system of claim 12 wherein:
a mobile transceiver is carried by each of at least two automobiles, the mobile transceivers can communicate with each other and each processor has additional executable code that causes it to:
identify the locations of the automobiles over time; and
determine if there will be a collision between the automobiles.

14 . The system of claim 13 wherein:
the mobile transceivers are coupled to the automobile instrumentation so that they can use the information from the instrumentation in their determinations.

15 . The system of claim 14 wherein:
the instrumentation is a GPS receiver, and the information represents the global position of the automobile, which is used to determine the absolute position of the transceivers.

16 . The system of claim 12 wherein the nodes are within a package storage area; and
the mobile transceivers are attached to packages to be delivered; and there is additional executable code causing the processor to:
identify the location of a package within the package storage area.

17 . The system of claim 16 wherein the cargo area is within a delivery truck, and the system further comprises:
a GPS device coupled to the processor, and the executable code further includes code to:
notify the user when the truck is nearing a location to deliver a package; and
identifies where the package is located in the cargo area.

18 . A method of tracking a position of a movable objects comprising the steps of:
providing at least two tracked transceiver at known locations relative to the tracked object; employing a least two node transceiver which will return a signal when requested and transmit their identity in the signal; transmitting from the node transceivers, and indication of their presence; requesting from the tracked transceivers, that the node transceivers send a reply; receiving at the tracked transceivers the signals from each of the node transceivers; determining a distance between the each node transceiver and tracked transceiver; using the known positional locations of the tracked transceivers to the movable object, and calculating the position of each tracked transceiver, and the movable object relative to the node transceivers.

19 . The method of claim 1 wherein:
the transceivers transmit and receive at least one of the modalities being Wi-Fi, cellular, near-field, and Bluetooth.

20 . The method of claim 1 wherein:
the at least two node transceivers is four node transceivers in at least two spatial planes and an orientation of the moveable object is also calculated.

Assignees

• Position Imaging Inc

Inventors

• Hill Edward L
• Bilbrey Brett
• Deffebach Iii Harry Lee
• Komoni Krenar

Classifications

• G06F3/14 Primary

  Digital output to display device {; Cooperation and interconnection of the display device with other functional units} · CPC title

• G01S5/0072

  Transmission between mobile stations, e.g. anti-collision systems · CPC title

• G02B2027/0178

  Eyeglass type (eyeglass details G02C) · CPC title

• G01S5/10

  Position of receiver fixed by co-ordinating a plurality of position lines defined by path-difference measurements {, e.g. omega or decca systems}(G01S5/12 takes precedence {; beacons and receivers cooperating therewith G01S1/306, G01S1/308}) · CPC title

• G02B27/017

  Head mounted · CPC title