New positioning technology could compete with GPS

A ground-based system that uses much stronger signals than GPS can pinpoint your location in cities and indoors

GOT a smartphone or satnav but still can't get a fix on where you are? A new positioning system could compete with GPS to make sure you never lose your bearings again.

Instead of satellites, Locata uses ground-based equipment to project a radio signal over a localised area that is a million times stronger on arrival than GPS. It can work indoors as well as out, and the makers claim the receivers can be shrunk to fit inside a regular cellphone. Even the US military, which invented GPS technology, signed a contract last month agreeing to a large-scale test of Locata at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

"This is one of the most important technology developments for the future of the positioning industry," says Nunzio Gambale, CEO and co-founder of the firm Locata, based in Griffith, Australia.

Indoor positioning is the next big thing in location-tracking technology, and companies from Google to Nokia have jumped at the chance to prevent users getting lost in cavernous shopping malls, or in the concrete canyons of big cities, where GPS struggles to keep up. But their technologies typically have a short range, and location resolutions in the order of a few metres.

By contrast, Christopher Morin of the US Air Force tested Locata's accuracy recently at White Sands, and it worked to within 18 centimetres along any axis. Morin says it should be possible to get the resolution down to 5 centimetres.