NEXTEL CELL PHONE GPS POSITIONS

Washington DC

Background - the FCC has mandated that all cell phone calls made after the year 2002 will be able to be located to within 50 feet. Nextel in Reston, Virginia, is testing their system’s ability to perform this function and hired Taylor Wiseman & Taylor to provide a set of truth coordinates to use in their tests. Nextel furnished TWT with a list of pre-selected locations to be positioned with geographic coordinates accurate to one meter. The sites were located throughout Washington DC inside various buildings. This therefore required an innovative approach to completing the task.

Project - TWT used a combination of post processed carrier phase gps and real time kinematic gps to set pairs of points throughout the city. These point pairs were set to provide starting control and geodetic azimuths for orientation. From these control points, Taylor Wiseman & Taylor used precise geodetic methods to traverse indoors to position the Test points. The deliverable to nextel consisted of geographic coordinates referenced To nad83 (1993 adjustment) accurate to several centimeters, therefore meeting and Exceeding the requirement for one-meter accuracy. In addition to positioning the test points in the city, TWT also determined the geographic coordinates for a new gps antenna on top of the nextel building in reston, virginia. This new antenna position was determined to an accuracy of better than one centimeter referenced to the ngs continuously operating reference station (cors) network.

CLIENT: Nextel Communications, Inc.
LOCATION: Washington DC

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