Urban GNSS Positioning for Smartphones

Lead  Prof. HSU Li-Ta

Department of Aeronautical and Aviation Engineering

Accurate smartphone positioning in “urban canyons” was ranked the #1 developer pain-point, with more than a billion Android location fixes each day on the wrong side-of-street. Prof. Hsu Li-Ta’s team developed two innovative solution approaches to overcome the major challenges of urban GNSS: 3D Map-Aided GNSS Correction and AI-Driven GNSS Positioning.

By fusing 3D city models and AI to reject multipath and non-line-of-sight receptions GNSS signals, it cuts urban positioning errors from tens of meters to around three metres. The technology has been adopted by leading smartphone manufacturers and now guides hundreds of millions of users worldwide. It also improves efficiency of ride-hailing and delivery apps, which report faster curb-side rendezvous and fewer missed pickups, boosting the competitiveness of partner devices.