Combination of indoor and outdoor positioning

Abstract

Indoor and outdoor environments create contradictory conditions for positioning and guidance of machines. While indoor environments are limited in size to rooms and buildings, outdoor positioning capabilities require regional or even global coverage. Secondly, the difficulty of receipting satellite signals indoors has triggered development of high sensitive and AGNSS receivers – with many issues remaining unsolved. Thirdly, the accuracy requirements are dissimilar between indoor and outdoor environments – typically there is a higher demand for relative accuracy indoors. This paper should be regarded as an overview of the current and near future positioning capabilities for indoor and outdoor environments. However, it does not lay claim to completeness. Focus is given on GNSS and various novel position systems that achieve cm-level accuracy or better which is a requirement for most applications in machine control and guidance of construction machines.