Study Claims GPS Technology Less Accurate for Location Data

Subsidiary of Liberty Media Corporation and a leading name in the wireless location technologies, TruePosition Inc. announced last week the finding of a new research, carried out in collaboration with ABI Research. 

The research put forward by the duo highlighted the brighter side of U-TDOA (Uplink Time Difference of Arrival), while revealing the limitations of A-GPS (Assisted GPS) when it comes to locating 911 emergency calls made on mobile phones.

TruePosition and ABI Research carried out the study using a number of off-the-shelf mobile phones to make over 3500 genuine 911 emergency calls in Austin and Frisco - 2 major cities in the state of Texas. The main motive behind the tests were to find out a reliable comparison of the accuracy as well as the reliability factors associated with both the A-GPS and U-TDOA technologies. 

The study was conducted in a wide range of different conditions and environments including tall buildings in the cities, indoors, outdoor suburban environment, just to name a few.

“The testing data from Frisco and Austin shows that A-GPS did not perform well when the cell phone making the 9-1-1 call was indoors or when it was surrounded by tall buildings,” Dominique Bonte, Group Director of Telematics and Navigation for ABI Research said, Business Wire reports.

“A-GPS technology will not locate the cell phone with sufficient accuracy or, most likely, will not be able to locate the phone at all,” he added.