Millions of Android smartphones were quietly enlisted into one of the biggest crowdsourced navigation projects ever

Date:
Sun, 29 Dec 2024 13:04:00 +0000

Description:
Google researchers use Android smartphones to map ionospheric TEC, doubling coverage, improving positioning accuracy, and benefiting underserved global regions.

FULL STORY ======================================================================Phone-ba sed maps outperform the traditional Klobuchar ionospheric model globally Underserved regions like Africa benefit from enhanced ionosphere data Geomagnetic storms are tracked with high precision using smartphone networks

Mapping the ionosphere is critical for improving the accuracy of navigation systems, but existing methods face significant limitations. While
ground-based GNSS stations provide detailed maps of ionospheric total
electron content (TEC), their coverage is uneven, leaving large gaps in underserved regions.

Now, researchers from Google Research, Mountain View, CA, USA, have demonstrated an innovative solution utilizing millions of Android smartphones as a distributed network of sensors in a study published in Nature .

Despite being less precise than traditional instruments, these devices effectively double the measurement coverage, offering accurate ionosphere
data and addressing longstanding infrastructure disparities. The Ionospheres influence on navigation

The ionosphere, a layer of ionized plasma extending from 50 to 1,500 km above Earth, significantly impacts Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS)
signals by introducing positioning errors. However, traditional ground-based GNSS stations, while precise, suffer from limited spatial coverage and leave underserved regions vulnerable to inaccuracies.

The research from Google Research capitalizes on the billions of smartphones equipped with dual-frequency GNSS receivers to address coverage gaps. Unlike conventional GNSS stations, smartphones are mobile, widely distributed, and capable of capturing vast amounts of data.

By aggregating and averaging measurements from millions of devices, researchers achieved accuracy comparable to dedicated monitoring stations, even resolving phenomena like solar storms and plasma density structures.

Androids GNSS API facilitated the collection of satellite signal data, such
as travel times and frequencies, which were then used to estimate the ionospheric total electron content (TEC).

The study showed that while individual phone measurements are noisier than those from monitoring stations, their collective data provided robust and reliable results.

Comparisons showed the phone-based TEC model outperformed existing methods like the Klobuchar model, widely used in mobile phones.

Using data from Android phones, the researchers doubled the measurement coverage of the ionosphere compared to traditional methods, and were able to map plasma bubbles over India and South America and storm-enhanced density over North America during a geomagnetic storm in May 2024.

They also observed mid-latitude troughs over Europe and equatorial anomalies
- a phenomena previously inaccessible due to sparse station coverage.

Notably, regions like India, South America, and Africa, often underserved by traditional monitoring networks, benefited significantly from this approach, which produced real-time, high-resolution TEC maps. You may also like New insights into the Sun's corona emerge Vodafone made a phone call to space using a normal smartphone The Moon is getting a 4G network, thanks to Nokia



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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/pro/millions-of-android-smartphones-were-quietly-enl isted-into-one-of-the-biggest-crowdsourced-navigation-projects-ever


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