Optimization Algorithms in Local and Global Positioning

Abstract

With the rise of large city and the need of large civil engineering structures and city planning, surveying industry improves continuously their instruments/software in order to get cm accuracy position anywhere. Moreover, since the boom of mobile phones in the late 90s, location has become very valuable information for security, emergency and commercial applications. Depending of the application, the location technologies vary based on the accuracy of the location and the price of the system, which delivers the location information to the user. For outdoor applications, Global Navigation Satellite System is the main candidate, whereas if the user/mobile node is indoors or in a narrow street other technologies will be preferred such as the ones based on Wi-Fi or radio-frequency signal.This chapter provides an overview of different positioning technologies used in geo-location together with their limits/advantages. This chapter studies also a number of algorithms developed to estimate the position coordinates of a static or mobile user or target.