GPS Less Street Positioning System for Restaurant and ATM

Locating based on ARM Cortex M3 and WPAN

Abstract
Location Based Service (LBS) is defined as a wireless-IP service that uses geographic
information to serve a mobile user. As telecom service providers are driven to provide new offerings
aimed at differentiating themselves in market, innovative solutions are the need of the hour.
GPS less street positioning system uses LR-WPAN (Low Rate Wireless Personal Area
Network) technology to identify a users location and then associate information related to that location,
including nearby businesses or places of interest. A user is now able to search for the nearest restaurant or
an ATM of his choice by requesting through his mobile phone or his vehicle that has an integrated street
positioning device. The device is made with the LR-WPAN technology based on IEEE 802.15.4 protocol
transceiver. Although GPS is a choice it doesnt work very well in indoor environment like shopping
malls or even in congested city streets with large buildings. Also GPS equipped handset is much costlier
than a low end phone. LR-WPAN is the cheapest wireless network technology that can bring as many low
data rate intensive value added solutions to the mobile users. Low data rate means it also frees up much of
the 2G/3G cellular networks purely for higher data rate services.
The project design consists of constructing three WPAN nodes, one act as the mobile user node
and remaining are the places of interest for the user such as a restaurant and ATM center. Mobile user
node runs an application called restaurant or ATM locator which gets the user input via navigation keys
and actively scans for any nearby restaurant or ATM and displays the details like name and address of the
place of interest in the alphanumeric LCD display. End device nodes (places of interest) can be selected
as a restaurant node or an ATM node using functional keys on them. Mobile user node acts as the
coordinator in the network and it measures the received signal strength (RSSI) of the data packets
received and displays the nearest place first. User interface shows whether the user is going towards the
target or away from the target through a pattern of blinking LED.
ARM Cortex M3 based low power microcontroller runs the software for communication and
processes the data packets in all the three nodes. The microcontroller chosen is based on ARM Cortex M3
architecture. ARM Cortex M3 is the next generation high performance 32-bit ARM core developed
specifically for microcontroller applications with thumb-2 technology based on ARMv7-M architecture.