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Map-Based Location and Tracking in Multipath Outdoor Mobile Networks

Marco Anisetti, Claudio A. Ardagna, Valerio Bellandi, Ernesto Damiani, Senior Member, IEEE, and Salvatore Reale

AbstractTechnical enhancements of mobile technologies are paving the way to the denition of high-quality and accurate geolocation solutions based on data collected and managed by GSM/3G networks. We present a technique that provides geolocation and mobility prediction both at network and service level, does not require any change to the existing mobile network infrastructure, and is entirely performed on the mobile network side, making it more robust than other positioning systems with respect to location spoong and other terminal-based security threats. Our approach is based on a novel database correlation technique over Received Signal Strength Indication (RSSI) data, and provides a geolocation and tracking technique based on advanced map- and mobility-based ltering. The performance of the geolocation algorithm has been carefully validated by an extensive experimentation, carried out on real data collected from the mobile network antennas of a complex urban environment. Index TermsGeolocation, GSM, 3G mobile communication networks, Kalman lters, received signal strength indication.

I. I NTRODUCTION

HE increasing diffusion of mobile devices and the corresponding improvements of sensing technologies make available a great amount of accurate location information, which can be used to provide reliable, accurate, and precise algorithms for computing the position of users carrying mobile phones. The term geolocation denotes a variety of techniques aimed at mobility prediction, that is, computing and tracking the position of mobile terminals, and refers to one of the hottest topics in wireless and mobile computing research. Mobility prediction [1], [2] can be used both at network level to support several crucial tasks for network management (e.g., handoff management [3], efcient code division in 3G networks [4]) and at service level to support -commerce and a number of Location-Based Services (LBSs) (e.g., navigation services, emergency rescue [5]). In both contexts, the geolocation precision and accuracy play a fundamental role. Geolocation of mobile terminals has been extensively considered in past works. Early research considered location techniques based on time measurements, such as, Time of Arrival (ToA), Time Difference of Arrival (TDoA), EnhancedObserved Time Difference (E-OTD) [6], [7]. Time-based methods are precise only when the Line-Of-Sight (LOS) between

Manuscript received January 8, 2010; revised October 12, 2010; accepted December 10, 2010. The associate editor coordinating the review of this paper and approving it for publication was T. Hou. M. Anisetti, C. A. Ardagna, V. Bellandi, and E. Damiani are with the Dipartimento di Tecnologie dellInformazione, Universit` degli Studi di a Milano, Italy (e-mail: rstname.lastname@unimi.it). S. Reale is with GREENGEGNERIA.IT, Italy (e-mail: s.reale@greengegneria.it). Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TWC.2011.011811.100025

the mobile terminal and the base stations is completely free of obstacles [6]. In urban environments, where scenarios with No LOS (NLOS) are common, precision of time-based methods is usually poor. Another major limitation of these techniques is that the accuracy of the estimated position heavily depends on the number of measurements and on the placement of the antennas, which must support triangulation. Other solutions focused on satellite-based positioning systems, such as the popular Global Positioning System (GPS) [8], [9]. Standard GPS geolocation performs rather poorly in dense urban areas or inside buildings, where satellites are not visible by mobile terminals, and makes the location information available on the mobile device side only [8]. Recent enhancements in GPS technology resulted in the denition of Differential GPS (DGPS) [8] and GPS with Real Time Kinematik (RTK) [10], high-accurate positioning systems that achieve a precision less than a meter at the price of adding ad-hoc signals for error correction. These systems however still suffer of the same problems of GPS in urban environments [8]. For these reasons, we claim that even leaving their cost and impact on battery consumption aside, satellite-based techniques are not likely to be the key technology for a number of interesting LBSs, such as the identication and certication of mobile terminal trajectories. Another class of approaches relies on WLAN positioning techniques (e.g., [11], [12]). For instance, Skyhooks WiFi Positioning System (WPS) [12], originally adopted by Apple for the rst generation of its iPhone and iPod-touch devices, uses known locations of wireless access points exploiting mobile terminal ability to detect such access points identity, even when they do not join the corresponding wireless network. WPS techniques put the mobile terminal in charge of its own localization, but assume WiFi access points to be trustworthy. Experimental work at ETH Z rich [13] u has shown the vulnerability of Skyhooks and similar public WLAN positioning systems to location spoong attacks. Other approaches [14], [15] proposed to identify signal properties that support precise geolocation of mobile terminals, and to modify the network infrastructure to provide such signals. In urban and indoor environments, however, signal-based solutions are affected by the multipath signal problem [16]: incoming signals are reected by obstacles, and may arrive at destination in multiple copies, following different paths. The presence of very close obstacles makes ltering multiple copies of incoming signals difcult, as the time difference between each reected copy is very hard to predict. This problem can be alleviated by devising an ad-hoc, multicarrier signal structure supporting spectrum-based detection of copies [17]. However, a generalized adoption of multicarrier

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geolocation signals would require substantial modications to the existing mobile network infrastructure, including a specialized radio equipment for geolocation. The line of research closest to the work presented in this paper considers location techniques based on Received Signal Strength Indication (RSSI) [18], which measures signal attenuation, assuming free space propagation of the signal and omnidirectional antennas. Signal level contours around a base station are modeled as concentric circles, where smaller circles correspond to higher power values [18]. Similarly to time-based approaches, RSSI-based mobile terminal location is reduced to the well-known triangulation position problem. In this paper, we present a solution based on RSSI and on data normally collected and managed by GSM/3G networks. The main contribution of the paper is developing our previous research [1] towards the denition of a technique that: i) provides high-accurate geolocation and mobility prediction that can be used both at network and service level to provide enhanced functionalities [19], ii) does not require any change to the existing mobile network infrastructure, and iii) is performed at the mobile network side (network-centric), making it more robust against location spoong and other terminal-based security threats. More specically, we rst propose to apply an improved version of the traditional Database Correlation Method (DCM) [20] to incoming signal strengths to identify a set of candidate positions (Section II). We then describe an Enhanced Time-Forwarding Tracking (ETFT) technique, as an evolution of our previous TFT [1], that exploits GIS map information and a predicted motion model to produce a set of candidate paths (shadow paths in the following) that better suit the motion and map constraints (Section III). Our ETFT technique deals with signal uctuations, building an extended Time-Forwarding Graph (eTFG) that is used for an initial rough skim of candidate locations, and introduces a TimeForwarding Filtering (TFF) to perform a high-accurate path selection. Moreover an advanced map-based Kalman ltering is applied to the selected path in order to enforce other map constraints (Section IV). This additional lter exploits map information about the roads to form a coherent path that better approximates the actual mobility. Finally, to test the quality of our geolocation algorithm, we perform an extensive experimentation based on real data collected from the mobile network antennas of a complex urban environment, using different devices, and over a long period of time (Section V). II. DCM WITH M ULTIPLE C ANDIDATES Electro-Magnetic Field (EMF) prediction is a crucial task and an important source of error for geolocation techniques relying on triangulation or DCM over RSSI. In particular, four major phenomena inuence the radio propagation and the location precision: reection, diffraction, penetration, and scattering. As a consequence, traditional RSSI location estimation is not well-suited to urban areas, lacks of precision due to multipath propagation and building shadowing, and is, in principle, as reliable as the one obtained by timebased approaches. Good modeling of electro-magnetic signal propagation however has proven to be useful in mitigating the lack of precision of RSSI in urban environments. Advanced deterministic models (ray-tracing, IRT [21]), empirical

approaches (Hata-Okumura [22], Walsch-Ikegami [16]), and hybrid techniques (Dominant Path [23]) for EMF prediction have been successfully developed for various environments. However, many problems remain to be solved, including managing the uctuations introduced by environmental changes. An interesting approach to deal with EMF uctuations uses vector regression [24]. In a nutshell, regression techniques model the location problem as a checkpoint location, which can be solved as a machine learning problem. However, real data sampling are not always available and the need for a training phase jeopardizes the practical applicability of many machine learning techniques. Furthermore, checkpoint and neural network strategies are not suitable for trajectory tracking and dense localization. In this paper, we adopt our EMF prediction algorithm in [1] that enhances the COST231 Walsch-Ikegami [16] using GIS information (i.e., buildings elevation) and real antennas shapes. This approach makes statistic prediction model COST231 suitable for real environments, by reducing the loss in the prediction quality introduced by omnidirectional antennas. Although adding antennas shapes to the COST231 model improves EMF prediction quality, this is still not enough to tackle all physical phenomena inuencing the EMF prediction. In [1], we provided a comparison between the real RSSI of a terminal and the predicted one using antennas shapes and COST231, showing how the RSSI performance is affected by uctuation effects. To reduce the effects of such phenomena, our geolocation solution extends the database correlation approach proposed in [25] by using multiple candidates. In [25], the position of a mobile terminal is determined by comparing signal strength measurements performed by the mobile terminal itself with the EMF prediction stored in a lookup table. The lookup table is a matrix where every row represents a single point within the coverage area (expressed in Cartesian , coordinates, if 2D Cartesian representation of the area is used, or as a latitude and longitude pair, if GPS representation is used), every column an antenna, and every entry the path loss prediction from an antenna to . To keep computational complexity under control, lookup table lling and update can be done once in a while, when major changes in the area of interest occur. Generally speaking, computing the lookup table for a given area consists in super-imposing a grid where eld levels are quantized. This grid needs not to be uniform; rather, its sparseness can be controlled on the basis of the characteristics of the area of interest and cost constraints. The estimated location of the mobile terminal is dened as the entry in the lookup table whose coordinates minimize the location error . The location error is calculated as the sum of the squared errors between the path loss measured by the mobile terminal for each antenna in the area of interest and the path loss predicted for a given entry in the lookup table for the same set of antennas.1 More in detail, given antennas in the area of interest, we denote [] as the path loss measured by the mobile terminal from the antenna with index and [,] the predicted path loss from antenna to the -th cell in the grid.
1 In our solution, the path loss measured by the mobile terminal is communicated and elaborated by the network itself that is in charge of the whole geolocation process.

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200 180 160 140

Error (m)

120 100 80 60 40 20 0 10 20 30 40 50 60

(a)

Number of Candidates

Fig. 2.

Minimum local error as a function of the number of candidates.

(b)

Fig. 1. An example of a set of candidates for localization at two consecutive times t and t+1 in a real environment.

2 The location error is dened as ( [] [, ]) , where is the cell under consideration; the estimated location of the mobile terminal is the cell in the grid such that ( 2) =min ( [] [, ]) . Any single-point location technique however suffers of an intrinsic error due to discrepancy between real EMF strength and the predicted one in the lookup table [1]. The main causes of error in predicting EMF strength are: i) intrinsic model error, e.g., due to irregular skyline; ii) imprecision in geographical database, e.g., due to information aging of the map; iii) variation in the antenna features, e.g., any kind of power or gain variation; iv) variation in weather conditions. This intrinsic error is also due to EMF uctuations and is spread all over the area of interest. As a consequence, computing a single estimated location using squared error minimization on a xed number of stations hardly ever gives the correct location. Often the possible candidates do not even fall in a single region; rather, they are scattered all over the geographical area. Fluctuation may make one or the other of these candidates the best one at any given time, regardless of the distance between them. Our approach improves over single-candidate selection by using a variable number of position estimates [11]. Figure 1 shows an example based on real network data. In the example, selection is performed at two consecutive times t and t+1. Multiple candidates are shown as points, the best single

candidate as a big point, and the real position as a small circle. From the example, it is clear that, using only the best candidate (big point), the location quality is greatly reduced by uctuation effects. Multiple candidates, instead, give a considerable improvement in terms of quality, and make the solution more robust against uctuations. Also, the higher the candidates number, the higher the probability of including a location that better approximates the real position (see Section III for more details). By contrast, multiple candidates increase the complexity of the best candidate selection process in Sections III and IV. A solution balancing precision and performance is therefore needed. In our experiments (see Section V), we consider the urban environment in the city of Milan. Based on this environment, Fig. 2 shows the trend of the minimum local error (in meters) produced by the best candidate in the set ( axis) as a function of the maximum number of possible candidates ( axis). From the graph, it can be observed that the error decreases substantially until =20. For greater than 20, instead, the gain in terms of precision is triing, while the complexity in calculating the best candidate still increases. As a consequence, in urban environments like the one considered in this paper, where GIS information is available, =20 represents a good value to balance precision and performance and an upper bound that ts well all types of environments. In general, the number of candidates that represents the best compromise between complexity and accuracy may vary depending on the considered environment and the available GIS information. For instance, in the countryside, can be decreased still achieving an accuracy similar to the one achieved in urban environments. By contrast, in case no GIS information is available, should be increased to achieve a reasonable accuracy of the best candidate selection. III. E NHANCED T IME -F ORWARDING T RACKING (ETFT) Our tracking method is based on a time-forwarding algorithm. This algorithm uses the n candidates selected at each point in time to set up a directed acyclic graph, called extended Time-Forwarding Graph (eTFG), and to identify a set of paths compliant with the GIS map and motion constraints. A ltering stage, called Time-Forwarding Filtering (TFF), is

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however must be revised in the second step, since even a set of candidates nodes at distance = 1 can be completely unreachable due to EMF uctuations. In the second step, we consider edges between non-consecutive temporal nodes. Let + be the set of the n candidates positions at time + . Recalling that, the distance from a node , to a node ,+ is the same as the weight among them, a distance can also be dened between a node , and a set + of nodes at time + , according to the map, as follows:
Fig. 3. ETFT candidates selection process.

applied to eTFG, using a likelihood-based approach, to select a subset of paths (shadow paths) and to identify the best path.2 Then, the lter selects the best node as the candidate position. Figure 3 shows an architectural view of ETFT that is described in the remainder of this section. A. Extended Time-Forwarding Graph (eTFG) A TFG is a direct acyclic graph [1], where every node represents one of the possible positions of the mobile terminal, while edges, dened by the node pairs they connect (i.e., by source and destination nodes), represent motion between them. Each edge is associated with a weight, computed based on destination reachability and map constraints. eTFG extends the notion of edge and includes a holistic path evaluation to produce a set of paths compliant with all map and motion constraints. The weight function is dened over each edge = (, , ,+ ), where , [1, . . . , ], [1, . . . , ], and is the actual time, as follows: { (, ) = (, ) (, ) () + (1)

represents the time difference described by the edge . As a result, each edge is marked as reachable and associated with the corresponding weight, if and only if the function , which provides the real distance between two nodes , and ,+ based on the map (i.e., taking into account the presence of buildings, street curves, and so on), is less than the threshold (). () denes the maximum acceptable distance between each node (based on the mobile terminal velocity) and is a function of the time variation . In other words, by using Equation (1), weights are put in a linear relation with distances between nodes, modeling reachability between nodes, and enforcing all known map and motion constraints. Each eTFG path is then composed by a maximum set of edges and +1 nodes covering time from to +. By using the GSM sampling interval ( 500 ms), our eTFG tolerates EMF uctuation and is realistic enough for TFF ltering purpose. eTFG is constructed using a two-step algorithm, as follows. In the rst step, a weight function with xed = 1 is used, considering only edges between consecutive temporal nodes. This generates an eTFG containing the set of edges for which (, ) (1), and the set of nodes with at least one valid inbound or outbound edge. This initial eTFG
2 Shadow

paths are used for recovery in case of best path failure.

) ( (, , + , ) = [1] ((, , ,+ ), ) (2) For each node , , if no reachable node is found at time + , that is, (, , + , ) = +, nodes at time + + 1 are evaluated. If (, , ++1 , ) = +, an edge between non-consecutive temporal nodes is added to eTFG. In our previous TFG implementation [1], if + 1 was greater than , the path was considered unreachable without considering possible uctuation error at the outer nodes. For this reason, we extend the forwarding edges in order to always complete the temporal window reaching an outer node, still maintaining the maximum number of nodes in a single path equals to +1. This avoids extreme cases in which EMF uctuation at time makes all candidates unreachable and therefore the whole eTFG path inapplicable. Summarizing, our eTFG includes three types of edges: edges between two consecutive nodes, if W= +; forwarding edges between two non-consecutive temporal nodes , and ,+ , with 0 < : 1) =11 ((, , + , )) = + and 2) (, , + , ) = +. extended forwarding edges between two nonconsecutive temporal nodes , and ,+ , with < + /2 The left box in Fig. 3 shows an example of eTFG where edges with black lines represent motion between two consecutive temporal nodes, and edges with dashed lines model motion between two non-consecutive temporal nodes. The dotted rectangular region identies the set of root nodes used at time for the best candidate identication. By combining all edges and nodes in eTFG, a set of candidate paths that satisfy the (, ) () inequality is generated, and could be used to calculate a set of ltered candidate positions for the mobile terminal. In an earlier version of this work, we used the minimum path on the graph satisfying the weight function (, ) () to obtain a preliminary set of ltered positions for the mobile terminal; our experiments in real environments however have shown that this choice is not optimal in presence of uctuation effects. In addition, considering the time window used by eTFG, we need to manage two particular cases. The rst case produces a path with a single direct forwarding (or extended forwarding) edge that connects one of the eTFG nodes at time 0 and one at time (or + /2). The generated path, that only contains two nodes, must be ltered out since it is due to uctuation errors with high probability. The second case produces two equal estimations in subsequent time instants, as the inbound and the outbound of eTFG. Although this path could be

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considered as an error due to uctuations, and then eliminated, it cannot be ignored when pedestrian walk is considered. To deal with these problems, we postpone the selection of the candidates to a ltering stage called Time-Forwarding Filtering (TFF), that performs a holistic evaluation of the paths. Finally, our solution mitigates the high dependency on by selecting a set of eTFG paths instead of one candidate path. Note that GIS information (e.g., pedestrian-only areas or motorways) can be used to tune the parameter of eTFG [1]. Using a high value for (i.e., a long term prevision), we obtain a strong trend prevision that lters out any out-oftrend movement and produces high accurate results in high trend-correlation areas like motorways or oneway streets. By contrast, using a small value for , we obtain good results for pedestrian-only areas, where the motion is usually chaotic without any prevalent movement trend. B. Time-Forwarding Filtering (TFF) eTFG identies a set of paths compatible with motion and map constraints which need to be ltered out by TFF to choose the path that better approximates the user movement. The main idea of the TFF algorithm is to use a short time window (usually between 2 and 6 seconds) bounded by , where the motion model of the user can be considered uniform with constant velocity. The time window is moved from one instant to the consecutive and therefore the constant velocity model is smoothed along the time. Our ltering strategy is time-forwarding because a position , is calculated by considering the sets of all candidates from to + and the set of all shadow paths (selected by means of a likelihood-based approach). More in detail, our ltering solution is based on residual evaluation with Kalman ltering that is used to smooth out the multiple position estimates to form a coherent path [26]. We rst model the mobile stations state () at time as follows: () = [() () () ()] (3)

In the standard Kalman formulation, matrix expresses a control action acting on control input . Matrix correlates the state with the measure, that is, a position in the same space. The random variables and represent respectively the process and measurement noise. They are assumed to be independent of each other, white, and with normal probability distributions () (0, ) and () (0, ), where is the process noise covariance matrix and is the measurement noise covariance matrix. In our case, i) the controlled process is the motion of the mobile terminal, while the measurement represents the rough locations extracted after eTFG, ii) the control matrix is not used, and iii) the deterministic part of state equation is the constant velocity motion sampled every seconds (see matrix A). Note that, by balancing the process and measurement noises, it is possible to consider the motion model more reliable than the measure or vice versa. Here, we trust the motion model more because it limits the effects of the physical phenomena, which usually degrade the quality of the location process on the eld. Therefore, our solution is aimed at discovering the coherence of the mobile terminal candidate movements with the constant velocity model, rather than assessing the variation in the motion model due to the measurement process. To evaluate if a certain path is coherent with the model, we adopt the well-known log likelihood of the Kalman residual, that is, the difference between the actual measurement vector () and the predicted measurement vector (), where () is the a priori estimate. We consider this residual as a random vector with distribution according to a multivariate normal distribution with population mean vector and population variance-covariance matrix . The joint density function of the random vector is as follows: { } 1 1 ( ) ( ) ( ) = 2 (5) where denotes the determinant of variance-covariance matrix . Since the residual vector is a 2-dimensional vector, is equal to two, and we obtain a bivariate normal distribution = () () (6) ( 1 2 2 )/2
1 2

where is the measurement noise covariance and () is the a priori estimated error covariance. The mean vector of the residual is chosen as equal to zero, and therefore () = ( 1) + ( 1) + ( 1) [] () = () + () [] Equation (5) reaches the maximum value when is equal to (4) or the residual is zero. In general, TFF associates a likelihood value, inuenced by where () is the state vector and () is the measured vector the size of , to each probable path candidate. The bigger is at step . The square matrix in Equation (4) associates the state at time 1 to the state at time by calculating the , the more the constant velocity trend needs to be satised amount of movement due to velocity ( 1) and ( 1) for a long period of time. For instance, near crossroads needs to be kept low since the constant velocity assumption in ( 1), and is dened as follows. can be violated considering a long period of time, while on motorways the parameter should be increased to better 1 0 0 0 1 0 satisfy the assumption of constant velocity. = 0 0 1 0 The right box in Fig. 3 shows the paths candidate reduction in TFF, where the set of all shadow paths (selected by means 0 0 0 1

where () and () dene the terminals position, and () and () the velocity in the directions of the and axes. Using the standard Kalman assumption [26] that the motion is governed partly by a deterministic equation and partly by a random variable, the mobility state model can be expressed compatibly with the two fundamental Kalmans equations:

= () +

(7)

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square and labeled with a + indicate the best positions for the two time instants. Summarizing, the time-forwarding tracking technique takes full advantage from all available GIS information, such as area classication, so that the validation of candidate locations depends on map constraints. In some geographical areas, the additional information provided by the map can be poor or absent; when this happens, our technique is anyway able to dynamically build an information database by estimating all relevant knowledge including speed and acceleration. IV. M AP - BASED F ILTERING ETFT produces a set of best candidates that satisfy a forwarding temporal relation, but no location correlation is applied in the ETFT ltering stage. This lack of location correlation may introduce an intrinsic measurement error in the tracking algorithm [27]. We therefore extend our solution by providing an adjustment of our model that further renes the set of best candidates. The renement relies on an additional Kalmal lter that uses map information about the roads [28]. This Kalman lter aims to guarantee a path continuity relation, especially when different candidates belong to different ETFT paths, and smooths out the multiple position estimates to form a coherent path that better approximates the actual mobility. Our map-based Kalman lter is an independent module aimed at estimating the kinematic parameters of the target and is different from existing solutions including our previous constrained Kalman Filter with HSMM [1]. Among geolocation and tracking solutions based on ltering, one interesting work [29] proposes two algorithms for real-time tracking, location, and dynamic motion of a mobile station in a cellular network. This method is based on pre-ltering and two Kalman lters (one to estimate the discrete command process and the other to estimate the mobility state). The mobility model is built on a dynamic linear system driven by a discrete command process that was originally developed for tracking maneuvering targets in tactical weapons system [30]. The command process is modeled as a semi-Markovian process over a nite set of acceleration levels. Another promising technique proposed by Yang and Wang [31] is a Monte Carlo algorithm for cell handoff decision based on mobility tracking in cellular networks. The authors estimate the location and speed of a mobile terminal to predict the signal strength in future time instants, and exploit this prediction to forecast the handoff time. The work in [32] studies the performance of target tracking in the presence of nonlinear road constraints using a constrained extended Kalman lter (EKF). Another class of ltering exploits time-based biased Kalman Interacting Multiple Model (IMM) lter to model the error introduced by a NLOS scenario [33][35]. Finally, the work in [36] presents a solution based on RSSI and map information that exploits particle ltering and is tested with data coming from a real network. This solution is less accurate than our solution and requires additional computational costs, since 1000 particles are used for the localization process. Note that, the ltering techniques in this paper are different from the above described techniques. Our techniques in fact do not lter the location of the mobile terminal using RSSI, but they take the terminals most probable positions, and try to

(a)

(b)

Fig. 4. An example of ETFT tracking for two consecutive times (a) and (b).

of a likelihood-based approach) is presented with black lines, the best path at time is presented with a bold line, the best candidate , is presented as a circle labeled with X, and the set +1 of root nodes at time + 1 is shown inside a dotted rectangular region. The outcome of the TFF ltering stage is a set +1 of position candidates (with +1 ) and the best position , for time . Each node in +1 denes the root of a shadow path that has not been discarded (i.e., a shadow path whose likelihood value is greater than a threshold) and will be used at time + 1 to estimate ,+1 . Figure 4(a) and 4(b) show the entire ETFT process for two consecutive time instants. As said in Section II, in real environments, lookup table candidates (i.e., all points in Fig. 4) are often very sparse in the surrounding area. The ETFT tracking approach addresses this sparseness by including time correlation. In the example, the real positions are indicated by two circles, while the squares surrounding the candidate points identify the eTFG candidates that satisfy the TFF likelihood (the set of root nodes of the shadow paths), meaning that they approach the constant velocity model with a likelihood greater than a threshold. The candidates surrounded by a

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enforce the map and motion model constraints to extract the best candidate. Map information can be included in the models in two ways: i) by tuning the model of motion dynamics, and ii) by modifying the measurements according to road restrictions. The latter may already have been taken into account, since the set is already ltered by ETFT. Option i) (i.e., tuning the model of motion dynamics) involves different methods to incorporate the road information in the dynamic model of Kalman equations. In general, the performance of a Kalman lter is strictly related to the correctness of the motion dynamics model; biases and bad performance can often result when targets deviate unexpectedly from the constant velocity model in the transient periods. A conventional way of modeling maneuvers in target dynamics is via additive Gaussian noise, but maneuver acceleration is naturally discontinuous and may not be well representable as noise. In our module, we adopt a standard approach for incorporating the ground information, based on a dynamic adaptation of the noise variance for maneuvers. This results in a exible solution that deals well with transversal maneuvers, which take place when a mobile device reaches a curve or changes direction at road junctions. Other types of maneuvers (i.e., longitudinal maneuvers, such as acceleration or jerking) frequent in vehicular motion cannot be easily predicted since they depend on the individual drivers behaviour. However, their direction and magnitude can be roughly assessed based on the map. As the mobile terminal approaches the end of a road segment, the probability of maneuver increases. Therefore the value of process variance can be tuned, considering distance to the next waypoint and the estimated velocity as well. In this context, we use a plain noise model with a white acceleration model. The acceleration in and directions = [ , ] is assumed to be constant in the time interval, not to exhibit autocorrelation, and to have 2 magnitude distributed as (0, ). The resulting mapbased Kalman lter is similar to the one used in ETFT (see Equation (4)) but the random variable is dened as follows: = ) ( 1 2 2 0 ( ) = 0 0 1 2 2 0

Fig. 5. Map-based Kalman (regular line) vs standard Kalman ltering (dotted line).

[ =

] (10)

Considering the measurement covariance matrix and , that is, the orientation of the road with respect to the horizontal axis, as well as the set of measurements projected to the road segments, the map-related covariance matrix is obtained from the original measurement covariance matrix in the following way: 2 = 2 2 () + 2 2 () 2 = 2 2 () + 2 2 () 2 = 2 2 () + 2 2 () = (2 2 )2 ()2 () [ 2 ] = 2

(11)

(12)

(8)

where is the sampled interval. , that is, the covariance matrix of the normal probability distributions of () (0, ), becomes: 2 ( ) =
1 4 4 1 3 2

0 0

0 1 4 4 0 1 3 2

1 3 2

0 2 0

0 1 3 2 0 2

(9)

This ltering avoids biases due to transient mismatches between the constant velocity model and transversal accelerations, but increases the noise in the estimators. To handle this, we also exploit option ii) (i.e., modify the measurements according to road restrictions) by using the measurement covariance matrix :

where 2 is related to transversal variance inside the road and depends on the road width. It is clear that inaccuracy in location produces incorrect transformation of measurements, with degradation even more severe than the ones due to dynamic model correction. One of the main advantages of Kalman ltering is that it allows to model measurement and system errors independently. In our setting, measurement errors model the accuracy of the location candidates, while system errors represent the accuracy of trajectory prediction. Figure 5 shows a comparison between our map-based Kalman and the standard one. A posteriori error covariances of standard Kalman are presented with dotted circles, while the ones of map-based Kalman with solid ellipses. Two consecutive real positions of the mobile device are labeled with + symbol, the measured positions are presented with triangles, the locations using map-based Kalman with squares, and the locations predicted with traditional Kalman with small circles. It is clear that, by adapting a posteriori error covariance of the Kalman ltering to the roads information, we obtain a great improvement in terms of quality of geolocation as showed by our experimental results. V. E XPERIMENTAL R ESULTS We extensively validate our map-based geolocation algorithm in a eld environment, dealing with physical phenomena. We set up an experimental environment organized as

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TABLE I C OMPARISON OF ERROR IN EMF PREDICTION . F OR EACH TRIP, DURATION IN SECONDS (D UR .), NUMBER OF INVOLVED ANTENNAS (A NT.), AND ERROR - VARIANCE OF THE ERROR ( IN D B ) FOR EACH COMBINATION OF INFORMATION ARE PRESENTED .

Exp. E1 E2 E3 E4 E5 E6 E7 E8 E9 E10 E11 E12 Mean

Dur. 3000s 4000s 1089s 1443s 959s 789s 133s 1119s 2099s 899s 929s 1761s -

Ant. 54 39 22 37 20 30 16 37 52 39 22 26 -

LOS 49.3 - 7.0 48.3 - 6.9 42.9 - 5.4 48.8 - 7.1 41.9 - 9.9 51.4 - 8.5 52.4 - 15.0 47.7 - 6.9 49.7 - 6.6 48.4 - 6.5 43.1 - 5.4 46.1 - 6.4 47.5-7.6

NLOS 17.4 18.5 22.4 20.5 21.1 18.7 17.5 19.2 17.2 18.8 22.2 24.2 6.3 7.1 6.3 8.2 9.2 9.2 6.6 7.7 5.7 6.3 6.4 8.5

NLOS+E 12.5 - 7.9 14.9 - 7.2 20.0 - 7.0 16.3 - 7.8 18.8 - 8.2 16.5 - 11.6 17.4 - 6.1 17.8 - 8.8 15.4 - 6.0 17.0 - 7.5 13.4 - 7.8 15.6 - 8.5 16.3 - 7.9

NLOS+S 13.0 12.8 14.6 13.1 14.9 13.4 14.1 12.3 12.8 12.1 15.1 14.5 6.0 7.2 7.9 7.8 5.5 8.5 7.6 5.6 5.9 5.1 7.4 7.2

NLOS+S+E 11.6 - 6.6 9.4 - 8.1 11.3 - 6.3 9.9 - 8.6 13.0 - 4.7 10.1 - 7.9 10.4 - 6.2 10.7 - 5.9 10.5 - 5.8 12.2 - 5.4 13.1 - 7.7 12.7 - 6.2 11.2-6.6

19.8-7.3

13.6-6.8

follows (more details are available at http://sesar.dti.unimi.it/ ctd.html). First, we performed twelve trips by car in the city of Milan, the second largest metropolitan area in Italy providing an urban environment that includes parks and skyscrapers, over a month of experimentation. Trip duration varied from 2 minutes to 1 hour. Information related to serving and neighboring cells coupled with GPS latitude and longitude was collected, using cellular phones, every 0.48 seconds. Then, we implemented a simulator of our geolocation algorithm and we performed different types of testing over real network data for evaluating EMF prediction quality (see Section V-A) and for assessing geolocation quality with respect to the actual position of a moving cellular phone (see Section V-B). Our experiments show the importance of environmental data for EMF prediction, that is in turn fundamental to establish the amount of ltering needed. In the following, we compare our solution with traditional approaches (e.g., COST231, DCM). Comparison with other solutions is difcult to achieve since they usually consider articial data. Moreover, the comparison of solutions considering different urban environments can result in misleading guessing due to the physical phenomena discussed in this paper. A. EMF Prediction Evaluation The quality of EMF prediction represents a fundamental aspect towards the denition and development of an accurate location prediction and tracking algorithm. Traditional solutions are not well suited for complex urban environments where physical phenomena, such as reection, can involve buildings and obstacles of different shapes and materials. Since the information required for high quality EMF prediction could not be included in standard GIS map, we propose an analysis of the quality of EMF prediction in relation with the availability of such information. We computed EMF values using a grid size of 10 meters and considering different combinations of information taken from our GIS map. Our grid size allows for fast computation and is consistent with the suggested grid resolution for RF EMF [37]. Selected combinations of map information are: i) omnidirectional antennas with no environmental information (LOS), ii) omnidirectional antennas with environmental infor-

mation (building structure with no elevation) (NLOS),3 iii) environmental information and building elevation (NLOS+E), iv) environmental information and antennas shape (NLOS+S), and v) all information, including building elevation and antennas shape (NLOS+S+E). To compute the quality of the EMF prediction using the above combinations, we calculate the error for each point in the considered trips as the difference between the predicted EMF and the one received by the cellular phone. As we will observe in the following, the error is highly dependent on the amount of available information used in the EMF prediction (i.e., shape of antennas, building elevation). An overview of the results for the considered paths (E1-E12) is presented in Table I. The mean error (see last row of Table I), expressed in decibel (Db), is reduced from 47.5 Db for LOS to 19.8 Db for NLOS, with a gain of 58.3%. In a eld environment, however, this improvement is not enough. As shown in the Mean row of Table I, taking into account building elevation (NLOS+E) boosts the precision of the EMF prediction by reducing the mean error of 3.5 Db with respect to NLOS (i.e., a gain of 17.7%). Taking into account directional antennas (NLOS+S), instead, boosts the precision of the EMF prediction by reducing the mean error of 6.2 Db with respect to NLOS (i.e., a gain of 31.3%). We note that the EMF prediction quality for NLOS+E and NLOS+S is highly dependent on the type of path. For instance, in path E1 with prevalent frontal exposition to cell tower orientation (the set of serving cells plus the six best cells), NLOS+E outperforms NLOS+S. By contrast, in path E7, NLOS+S outperforms NLOS+E. In general, by considering both building elevation and antenna shapes (NLOS+S+E), our modied COST231 outperforms traditional LOS and NLOS COST231 by reducing the mean error of 76.4% and of 43.4%, respectively. Generally speaking, it is clear that the more abundant the contextual information is, the more the quality of the EMF prediction will be. Contextual information, in fact, allows to partially take in account the physical phenomena inuencing EMF prediction. However, there is a subtlety to consider when partial or erroneous map information is available. In such a case, the EMF calculation can result in unpredictable behaviours that need to be managed carefully. Experiment E10 in Table I considers a path for which partial map information is available, that is, we do not consider building elevation in the rst part of the path. This case results in an EMF prediction with poor precision, which has performances similar to the NLOS+S case (i.e., the one with no building elevation). Also, it shows the importance of GIS map information and conrms the fact that outliers resulting from imprecision in building elevation can substantially degrade the EMF calculation process. As clear by the results of our analysis, the mean error in EMF prediction decreases signicantly by adding the shape of antennas and real building elevation map of the area (NLOS+S+E) to the standard COST 231 approach (NLOS). Obviously, since our experiments consider different trips in the city of Milan, the improvement may also depend on the coverage of each trip area. For instance, in case of trips with prevalent frontal exposition to cell tower orientation (e.g., E1 in Table I), the improvement is less than in other cases.
3 Points

i) and ii) represent the traditional COST231 algorithm use cases.

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TABLE II C OMPARISON OF LOCATION RESULTS ( ERROR - MEAN SQUARE ROOT IN METERS ) USING : i) T RADITIONAL DCM, ii) ETFT, AND iii) ETFT+M AP - BASED K ALMAN APPROACHES . Traditional DCM Approach NLoS+S+E 212.3 204.3 215.2 200.1 218.9 198.1 201.5 205.2 201.2 204.3 230.1 207.2 208.2 43.2 43.6 41.9 41.6 44.2 42.9 44.8 41.7 42.3 44.2 43.6 42.6 43.1 DCM with Multiple Candidates Approach ETFT ETFT+Map-Based Kalman 39.1 - 20.4 35.3 - 22.5 38.4 - 22.5 34.6 - 23.5 39.6 - 21.1 36.1 - 21.9 34.1 - 20.4 31.2 - 21.4 41.1 - 21.5 36.7 - 22.3 33.0 - 21.9 30.7 - 22.6 34.5 - 22.3 31.7 - 22.6 37.5 - 20.7 34.6 - 21.4 35.1 - 20.2 33.4 - 20.9 39.8 - 22.3 36.5 - 23.1 41.1 - 21.8 38.0 - 22.9 35.2 - 20.3 31.4 - 21.1 37.4 - 21.3 34.2 - 22.2

Exp. E1 E2 E3 E4 E5 E6 E7 E8 E9 E10 E11 E12 Mean

B. Location Prediction Evaluation We take the accuracy of the geolocation using DCM with Least Mean Square (LMS) described in [25] as a reference to evaluate our algorithm. We used the same twelve trips and environmental setting to test both the traditional DCM approach and the solution in this paper. In the eld, geolocation based on LMS achieves a mean error, measured in distance from the real GPS position, of 208.2 with less than 2% of estimations under the 50 meters of error when NLOS+S+E is used. The situation is even worse when the amount of contextual information decreases. Mean errors of 591, 302, 287, and 260 are achieved when LOS, NLOS, NLOS+E, and NLOS+S information is available, respectively. These errors are mainly due the fact that EMF prediction cannot deal with the uctuation of the real EMF. Although it is possible to reduce the effects of this uctuation by means of ltering, the obtained results are not good enough, since the localized nature of this uctuation makes the lter difcult to tune. Our strategy, that uses a set of multiple candidates for each point in time, drastically reduces the localization error. We set =20 possible candidates, which gives a good balance between performance and quality of the location process, and reduces the mean error [1]. However, the best position estimation can be still far from the real one, since the uctuation effects are too high. To overcome these problems, an ETFT-based strategy and a map-based Kalman ltering have been introduced, smoothing the general location quality (see Table II). The eTFG state reduction preserves a signicant location quality, since the majority of the best candidates, over the set of n probable ones, is preserved after the eTFG ltering. The highest rate of best candidates selected is achieved for path E5 (with value of 94.2%), while E4 has the worst result (with value of 90.1%). In general, all the paths achieve a rate greater than 90% with a mean value of 91.9%. It is important to note that, in the residual 8.1% of missing best candidates, the 65% represents those cases that are far from the real location due to a considerable error in EMF prediction. To select the best candidate, eTFG candidates are given in input to the TFF ltering, which identies the best , at time , and a subset +1 of root candidates to prevent drift effects during

tracking and calculate the best candidate at time + 1. There is still a possibility of jumping from one path to other (including all shadow paths) during generation, losing the time correlation. To prevent this unwanted effect, a map-based Kalman lter is applied to re-enforce the time correlation and produce a fully traceable path. The results of our experiments are summarized in Table II, where NLOS+E+S single candidate approach is compared with ETFT and ETFT with map-based Kalman ltering approaches. The results show that ETFT approach achieves a mean error of 37.4 against the 208.2 of NLOS+S+E, with a gain of 82%. The application of the map-based Kalman ltering gives an additional error reduction (mean error of 34.2) with a gain of 8.6% over the ETFT approach, and a negligible increase of the mean standard deviation (less than one meter) that does not affect our results. In this respect, it is important to note that, due to uctuation effects, ETFT-based solution may not be able to generate some of the locations along the path. This problem is solved by map-based Kalman ltering that provides an estimation also for those positions that have not been calculated with ETFT. Table II shows a worst case (unlikely) scenario in which estimations are not used, and therefore only locations calculated by ETFT are considered. In this scenario, we only perform selection among locations generated by ETFT. We also compare our solutions (i.e., ETFT only and ETFT with map-based ltering) with the results achieved when the best candidate in the set of candidates is manually selected by looking at the real GPS-based mobile terminal position. The candidate that gives the minimum error with respect to the real user position is selected and a path connecting the selected candidates in the time window under consideration is generated. We observe that both ETFT only (37.4) and ETFT with map-based ltering (34.2) approaches outperform the results given by the best candidate selection (38.7). These results show, on one side, that the best candidate selection is affected by environmental conditions and errors in EMF prediction, and, on the other side, the suitability of our ltering strategies which make our solution stronger against physical phenomena, such as uctuation. More in detail, the selection of the best candidate considers a set of candidates that has been populated based on the DCM lookup table in Section II. The accuracy of this selection is improved by our algorithm by considering i) the mobility of the user (Section III), that is used to remove from a path those points that, although are the best candidates for a given time instant, are not accurate due to EMF uctuation, and ii) map information about the roads (Section IV) to smooth out the overall path. To conclude, based on the results presented in Table II, Fig. 6 shows the Cumulative Distribution Function (CDF) of the location error for path E2 (selected randomly) by plotting on the axis the probability of a location error less than the corresponding value on the axis. Figure 6 shows that 5% of the predicted positions has less than 4.0465 meters of error; 50% less than 18.8491 meters; and 95% less than 63.7955 meters. VI. C ONCLUSION Mobile terminal geolocation is an essential pre-requisite for a wide range of applications on GSM/3G networks. For

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1 Cumulative Distribution Function 0.9 0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1
(4.0465, 0.05) (18.8491, 0.5) (63.7955, 0.95)

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[1] M. Anisetti, C. Ardagna, V. Bellandi, E. Damiani, and S. Reale, Advanced localization of mobile terminal in cellular network, Intl J. Commun., Network and Syst. Sci., vol. 1, pp. 95103, Feb. 2008. [2] M. Anisetti, C. Ardagna, V. Bellandi, E. Damiani, and S. Reale, Method, system, network and computer program product for positioning in a mobile communications network, in European patent EP1765031, published 21 Mar. 2007. [3] H. Lin, R. Juang, and D. Lin, Validation of an improved location-based handover algorithm using GSM measurement data, IEEE Trans. Mobile Comput., vol. 4, no. 5, pp. 530536, Sep.-Oct. 2005. [4] H. Buddendick, G. W le, S. Burger, and P. Wertz, Simulator for o performance analysis in UMTS FDD networks with HSDPA, in Proc. 15th IEEE International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC), Barcelona, Spain, Sep. 2004. [5] US FCC Enhanced 911 Fac Sheet, Jan. 2008, http://www.fcc.gov/911/enhanced/release/factsheet requirements 012001.pdf. [6] F. Gustafsson and F. Gunnarsson, Mobile positioning using wireless networks: possibilities and fundamental limitations based on available wireless network measurements, IEEE Signal Process. Mag., vol. 22, no. 4, pp. 4153, July 2005. [7] D. Munoz, F. Lara, C. Vargas, and R. Enriquez-Caldera, Position Location Techniques and Applications. Academic Press, 2009. [8] E. Kaplan and C. Hegarty, Understanding GPS: Principles and Applications, 2nd edition. Artech House, 2006. [9] G. Djuknic and R. Richton, Geolocation and assisted GPS, IEEE Computer, vol. 34, no. 2, pp. 123125, Feb. 2001. [10] R. Langley, RTK GPS, innovation, GPS World, pp. 7076, Sep. 1998. [11] P. Bahl and V. N. Padmanabhan, Radar: an in-building RF-based user location and tracking system, in Proc. 19th Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies (INFOCOM 2000), Tel-Aviv, Israel, Mar. 2000. [12] Skyhook, http://www.skyhookwireless.com/. [13] N. Tippenhauer, K. Rasmussen, C. Popper, and S. Capkun, Attacks on public WLAN-based positioning, in Proc. ACM/Usenix International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications and Services, Krakow, Poland, June 2009. [14] F. Lo Piccolo, A new cooperative localization method for UMTS cellular networks, in Proc. IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM 2008), New Orleans, LA, USA, Nov.-Dec. 2008. [15] B. Ludden and L. Lopes, Cellular based location technologies for UMTS: a comparison between IPDL and TA-IPDL, in Proc. IEEE 51st Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC 2000-Spring), Tokyo, Japan, May 2000. [16] E. Damosso, COST 231: digital mobile radio towards future generation systems, nal report, European Commission, Bruxelles, 1999. [17] D. Cyganski, J. Orr, and W. Michalson, A multi-carrier technique for precision geolocation for indoor/multipath environments, in Proc. ION GPS/GNSS 2003, Portland, OR, USA, Sep. 2003. [18] H. Song, Automatic vehicle location in cellular communications systems, IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol., vol. 43, no. 4, pp. 902908, Nov. 1994. [19] N. Samaan and A. Karmouch, A mobility prediction architecture based on contextual knowledge and spatial conceptual maps, IEEE Trans. Mobile Comput., vol. 4, no. 6, pp. 537551, Nov.-Dec. 2005. [20] H. Laitinen, J. L hteenm ki, and T. Nordstr m, Database correlation a a o method for GSM location, in Proc. IEEE VTS 53rd Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC2001-Spring), Rhodes, Greece, May 2001. [21] G. W le, R. Hoppe, and F. Landstorfer, A fast and enhanced ray o optical propagation model for indoor and urban scenarios, based on an intelligent preprocessing of the database, in Proc. 10th IEEE International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC 1999), Osaka, Japan, Sep. 1999. [22] Y. Okumura, E. Ohmori, T. Kawano, and K. Fukuda, Okumura-Hata propagation prediction model for UHF range, in the prediction methods for the terrestrial land mobile service in the VHF and UHF bands, ITU-R recommendation P.529-2, Geneva: ITU, 1995. [23] G. W le, R. Wahl, P. Wildbolz, and P. Wertz, Dominant path o prediction model for indoor and urban scenarios, in Proc. 11th COST 273, Duisburg, Germany, Sep. 2004. [24] Z.-L. Wu, C.-H. Li, J.-Y. Ng, and K. Leung, Location estimation via support vector regression, IEEE Trans. Mobile Comput., vol. 6, no. 3, pp. 311321, Mar. 2007. [25] D. Zimmermann, J. Baumann, M. Layh, F. Landstorfer, R. Hoppe, and G. W le, Database correlation for positioning of mobile terminals in o cellular networks using wave propagation models, in Proc. 60th IEEE

10

20

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40 Error (m)

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Fig. 6.

Cumulative distribution function of the location error for path E2.

instance, geolocation can enable social networks which will let users know when a friend happens to be nearby, or contextaware search engines which can help nding a recommended restaurant in an unfamiliar corner of town. The trend toward miniaturization and lower cost of GPS chipsets suggested that satellite-based geolocation systems like GPS could be the silver bullet of mobile phone geolocation. However, few location-based services based on GPS besides road navigation are currently available on cell phones. In this paper, we employed a novel time-forwarding tracking algorithm with GIS map constraints and a map-based Kalman ltering for error correction purposes, and we showed that the GSM/3G-based geolocation techniques can successfully challenge satellite-based techniques, natively supporting a number of LBSs, such as identication and certication of mobile terminals trajectories when terminals are on board vehicles. Our network-centric (as opposed to GPS device centric) terrestrial geolocation technique promises to be more robust than other popular geolocation systems, such as, WPS, w.r.t. location spoong and similar security attacks. In addition, our solution can be integrated with existing sources of location to compensate their location error and improve the overall location performances in those environments that are usually impervious to them. As an example, our algorithm can be useful when GPS-based approaches fail and lost connectivity, e.g., in urban or indoor environments, thus providing continuous estimation of the mobile device position. We also presented a complete experimentation in the eld, conrming that highprecision geolocation can be obtained by using statistical EMF prediction even in presence of uctuations. The computational approach presented in this paper increases real-time awareness of terminal position on the part of the GSM/3G networks, paving the way to future work in location-dependent modulation [38], adaptive cell sizing, and network management platforms based on mobility prediction techniques. Also, the information on user spatial distribution can be used for network dynamic planning in hybrid urban and indoor scenarios, e.g., supporting location-aware handoff between 3G and WiFi network protocols.

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Claudio A. Ardagna is an assistant professor at the Dipartimento di Tecnologie dellInformazione, Universit` degli Studi di Milano, Italy. He received a the Ph.D. degree in computer science from the Universit` degli Studi di Milano in 2008. His research a interests are in the area of information security, privacy, access control, mobile networks, and open source. He is the recipient of the ERCIM STM WG 2009 Award for the Best Ph.D. Thesis on Security and Trust Management. The URL for his web page is http://www.dti.unimi.it/ardagna Valerio Bellandi received the Ph.D. degree in computer science from the Universit` degli Studi di Mia lano in 2009. He is currently a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Dipartimento di Tecnologie dellInformazione, Universit` degli Studi di Milano, Italy. His research a interests are in computer vision, location algorithm and network communication protocol, with special regard to feature extraction methods and emotional state estimation by facial analysis. He is also involved in several research projects regarding link management protocol in optical network. Ernesto Damiani is currently a Professor at the Universit` degli Studi di Milano and the director a of the Universit` degli Studi di Milanos Ph.D. a program in computer science. His areas of interest include mobile networks, business process representation, Web services security, processing of semi and unstructured information (e.g., XML), models and platforms supporting open source development, and semantics-aware content engineering for multimedia. He is an Associate Editor of the IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON S ERVICE O RIENTED C OMPUTING , Area Editor of the Journal of System Architecture and a member of various editorial boards. He has published several books and about 200 papers and international patents. Prof. Damiani is a Senior Member of the IEEE and ACM Distinguished Scientist. Salvatore Reale headed the Radio Access Network Management R&D at Siemens TLC in Italy. He is a founder and member of Board of Directors of ITASTQB, the Italian Board of ISTQB (International Software Testing Qualications Board) for the international qualication scheme of Certied Testers. He is Founder and Owner of Partner Engineering Ofce at GREENGEGNERIA.IT. His interests are in ICT and energy areas.