Field tests of a cellular telephone positioning system

This paper presents Cellocate, a cellular telephone positioning system. Due to rules recently adopted by the FCC, cellular licensees must automatically provide the position of cellular 911 callers with an accuracy within 125 m in 67% of all cases. Cellocate estimates position using root MUSIC (MUltiple Signal Identification and Classification) to improve TOA (Time Of Arrival) estimation and hyperbolic trilateration to estimate position. Field tests indicate that Cellocate presently has an accuracy between 180 m and 300 m (66%). It is expected that accuracy will improve when additional cell sites are used in the position estimation process.