DETERMINING THE GEOGRAPHIC LOCATON OF A PORTABLE ELECTRONIC DEVICE

摘要

A self-positioning portable electronic device (100), e.g. a mobile terminal, comprises a signal receiving unit (106, 108) for receiving a signal from one or more remote transmitters (200), and a local positioning unit (110), e.g. an IMU, for determining a local position of the device (100). The signal receiving unit (106, 108) may comprise a single antenna element (108). The device (100) operates to obtain a plurality of data samples from the signal at different time points during a measurement period with movement of the portable electronic device (100) along an arbitrary trajectory (140), associate each data sample with a local position obtained from the local positioning unit (100) so as to form a synthetic antenna array, obtain an array response of the synthetic antenna array, and identify the geographic location of the portable electronic device (100), by processing the synthetic antenna array as a function of the array response and using knowledge about the geographic location of the transmitter(s) (200). The use of the array response allows the geographic location to be identified independently of signal transit time between the transmitter(s) (200) and the device (100).