UMTS Positioning Methods and Accuracy in Urban Environments

Abstract: During the 2nd generation Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) mobile communication, the focus of the mobile positioning was mostly on call setup and messaging. But the evolution of the 3rd generation Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA) has changed the focus of mobile positioning. With the increase use of smart phones the mobile positioning is now extensively used for location based services (LBS’s). Mobile positioning becomes extremely important when the user requests any particular LBS, because it directly affects the communication and resource handling between the network and the mobile user MU. In order to reduce cost of messages exchange between the network and the MU it is really important that network should know the location of MU with minimum error. There are many positioning methods that are used today for MU location estimation. In this thesis database correlation method (DCM) is used as a positioning technique to estimate the MU location in the Universal Mobile Telecommunication System UMTS network. The thesis will also explain different penalty techniques for different scenarios that could be used to improve the MU location accuracy in the urban environment. By applying different penalty techniques the best positioning accuracy achieved for 67% of the measurements varies is 88m and for 95% it is 153m. Other penalty techniques results will be compared at the end in order to find the best penalty techniques that offer much improved location accuracy for MU.