A water surface and underwater dual-purpose automatic positioning and tracking system and method, which belongs to the field of marine environment observation technologies. The positioning and tracking system includes: a rope winding and unwinding structure, arranged on a main hull structure; where the rope winding and unwinding structure includes a rope roller and a winding and unwinding rope wound around the rope roller; an auxiliary positioning remote control ship, located outside a main body of the main hull structure, where the auxiliary positioning remote control ship is in transmission and fixed connection with the winding and unwinding rope away from the rope roller; communication control units, arranged on the main hull structure and the auxiliary positioning remote control ship; and an automatic positioning tracker unit, arranged on the hull structure, where the automatic positioning tracker unit is in remote communication connection with the communication control units.

A range-finding and/or object-positioning system comprises one or more target devices; one or more reference devices communicating with said one or more target devices via one or more wireless signal sets, each wireless signal set comprising at least a first-speed signal having a first transmission speed and a second-speed signal having a second transmission speed, and the first transmission speed being higher than the second transmission speed; and at least one processing unit performing actions for determining at least one distance between one target device and one reference device based on the time difference between the receiving time of the first-speed signal and the receiving time of the second-speed signal of the wireless signal set communicated between said reference and target devices.

A range-finding and/or object-positioning system comprises one or more target devices; one or more reference devices communicating with said one or more target devices via one or more wireless signal sets, each wireless signal set comprising at least a first-speed signal having a first transmission speed and a second-speed signal having a second transmission speed, and the first transmission speed being higher than the second transmission speed; and at least one processing unit performing actions for determining at least one distance between one target device and one reference device based on the time difference between the receiving time of the first-speed signal and the receiving time of the second-speed signal of the wireless signal set communicated between said reference and target devices.

A practically implementable robust direction-of-arrival (DoA) estimation approach that is resistant to localization errors due to mobility, multipath reflections, impulsive noise, and multiple-access interference. As part of the disclosed invention the inventors consider infrastructure-less 3D localization of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) with no GPS assistance and no availability of global clock synchronization. The proposed method can be extended to challenging communication environments and applied for the localization of assets/objects in space, underground, intrabody, underwater and other complex, challenging, congested and sometimes contested environments. Each AUV leverages known-location beacon signals to self-localize and can simultaneously report its sensor data and measurement location. The approach uses two known location beacon nodes, where the beacons are single-hydrophone acoustic nodes that are deployed at known locations and transmit time-domain coded signals in a spread-spectrum fashion.

Systems and methods for facilitating acoustic-based localization and motion tracking in the presence of multipath, wherein, in operation, acoustic signals are transmitted from a speaker to a microphone array, a processor coupled to the microphone array calculates the 1 D distance between a microphone and/or each microphones of the microphone array and the speaker of a user device by first filtering out multipath signals with large time-of-arrival values relative to the time-of-arrival value of the direct path signal, then extracting out the phase value of the residual multipath signals and direct path signal, using the calculated 1 D distances, the processor may then calculate the intersection of the 1 D distances to determine the 3D location of the speaker to enable sub-millimeter accuracy of 1 D distance between a microphone of a microphone array and a speaker of a user device to enable smaller separation between the microphones of the microphone array.

A range-finding and/or object-positioning system comprises one or more target devices; one or more reference devices communicating with said one or more target devices via one or more wireless signal sets, each wireless signal set comprising at least a first-speed signal having a first transmission speed and a second-speed signal having a second transmission speed, and the first transmission speed being higher than the second transmission speed; and at least one processing unit performing actions for determining at least one distance between one target device and one reference device based on the time difference between the receiving time of the first-speed signal and the receiving time of the second-speed signal of the wireless signal set communicated between said reference and target devices.

A range-finding and/or object-positioning system comprises one or more target devices; one or more reference devices communicating with said one or more target devices via one or more wireless signal sets, each wireless signal set comprising at least a first-speed signal having a first transmission speed and a second-speed signal having a second transmission speed, and the first transmission speed being higher than the second transmission speed; and at least one processing unit performing actions for determining at least one distance between one target device and one reference device based on the time difference between the receiving time of the first-speed signal and the receiving time of the second-speed signal of the wireless signal set communicated between said reference and target devices.

The invention provides a navigation device comprising a docking portion configured to securely adhere to a surface and a unit having at least one of a visual, an audio or tactile indicator. The present invention provides a device which the user attaches to a wall or door or ground surface entered on the way into a building. A number of fixed devices then assist the user to retrace their route out of the building. In addition, the device can be configured to transmit essential information to a user located outside the building. The devices can also be configured to form a novel navigation communication system.

A method and apparatus for locating a target in a venue is described. A backend controller activates transmitters in a venue to send burst signals using a double symmetry configuration formed of a plurality of separate transmitter groups. The backend controller activates the transmitters into a second, different configuration for bursting. The resulting location signal information from each configuration is obtained by the backend controller, which then more accurately determines the location of the target in the venue.

A method and apparatus for locating a target in a venue is described. A backend controller activates transmitters in a venue to send burst signals using a double symmetry configuration formed of a plurality of separate transmitter groups. The backend controller activates the transmitters into a second, different configuration for bursting. The resulting location signal information from each configuration is obtained by the backend controller, which then more accurately determines the location of the target in the venue.