Amit Kulkarni

GLANSER: Geospatial location, accountability, and Navigation System for Emergency Responders - system concept and performance assessment

A system that provides accurate and reliable location of Emergency Responders (ERs) in all types of environments presents multifaceted technological challenges. The system is intended to provide indoor/outdoor precision navigation, robust communications and real-time position updates on remote command display devices. Operational requirements include rapid and nonintrusive deployment, scalability to 500 users and seamless integration with existing procedures. Additional challenges are imposed by the need for a device that minimizes size, weight, and power with the ability to operate in uncertain and potentially hazardous in-building environments. The Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate (Program Manager - Dr. Jalal Mapar) has sponsored Honeywell, with team members Argon ST and TRX Systems, to develop the Geo-spatial Location, Accountability and Navigation System for Emergency Responders (GLANSER). GLANSER is currently in its Option 1 phase which is the second of a four-year program to migrate the technology from concept development all the way to product and operations (1). This paper describes development of both the current and continuing development of GLANSER system components, including the overall architecture, the navigation sensors (e.g. IMU, Doppler velocimeter), the sensor fusion and navigator design, the integrated networking, ranging, and data communications radio, the display implementation and a description of the heuristic elements, including automatic map building and constraint-based navigation corrections. It also describes testing protocols and recent navigation performance results of the prototype system. The remainder of this document is organized into three major sections: Section I is introductory and provides background information including key system requirements, technical challenges, candidate approaches, and rationale for selection of approach, sensors, hardware, and algorithms employed by the GLANSER system. Section II describes the GLANSER system and its major subcomponents in greater detail (including descriptions of the User Interface display). Section III describes the underlying ranging and communications network on which the GLANSER system is based. The final section of this report (section IV) presents results which describe performance and navigation accuracy of the current system under test.