• Blended Learning & Flipped Classroom

Location has become a crucial information for a huge number of services, many of which fall in the area of transportation. Modern transportation systems, often referred to as smart mobility or intelligent transportation systems (ITS), rely on information and communication technologies (ICT) to improve safety, sustainability and quality of mobility. Fundamental is the knowledge of position/velocity of vehicles, people and assets, either single entities or aggregates (i.e., traffic flows). Global navigation satellite system (GNSS) is the dominant technology in open sky, but severe propagation conditions (indoor, urban canyons) or critical performance requirements (accuracy, latency reliability) call for the integration with hybrid localization technologies, such as wireless networks, radar, and inertial systems.

The goal of this course is to teach students the fundamentals of localization, navigation and communication systems for smart mobility. Specific objective are i) to provide a basic understanding of wireless technologies and processing methodologies for radio localization, including satellite navigation systems and wireless positioning based on cellular or short-range networks; ii) to discuss location-based services and technologies for smart mobility, focusing on communication systems for road safety and traffic efficiency, traffic monitoring systems, models and processing methodologies for traffic analytics, vehicular networks for cooperative intelligent transportation systems.

Lessons are integrated with seminars by experts from academia and industry. The course includes interactive activities and exercises carried out in Matlab environment with students organized in groups, aimed at the simulation and assessment of localization/mobility systems in practical use-cases.

Knowledge and understanding
Students will be able to: understand architectures, elements and signal processing methodologies of wireless positioning systems; understand sensing, processing and communication technologies for ITS; define mathematical models for formulation and analysis of a navigation problem; learn dynamic models and tracking filters for mobile scenarios.

Applying knowledge and understanding
Student will be able to: apply the mathematical models to design positioning algorithms and assess the related performance; apply dynamic models and tracking filters to practical scenarios of smart mobility.

Making judgements
Students will be able to: identify suited positioning technologies for different application scenarios; identify how the network deployment and measurement limitations impact on the system performance.  

Communication
Students will be able to: describe the learned technologies, at different levels of details, also comparing them with respect to specific aspects; present a project consisting in the simulation of a localization/mobility problem, implementation of a selected methodology and evaluation of the performance (non mandatory).

Part I - Fundamentals of localization and navigation

Location-based services, location measurements (TOA, TDOA, AOA, RSS), infrastructures and protocols, spatial-temporal reference systems, positioning methods (multi-lateration/angulation, proximity sensing, fingerprinting, dead reckoning, hybrid approaches), navigation equations and algorithms, accuracy and geometric dilution of precision, dynamic models and filters for mobile positioning (Kalman, grid-based and particle filters).

Part II - Wireless technologies for indoor/outdoor applications

Positioning systems based on cellular and short-range networks (cellular, LPWAN, WiFi, Bluetooth, ZigBee, UWB, RF-ID), satellite navigation (GPS, Galileo, GNSS, Beidou) and augmentation systems, hybrid and advanced technologies (passive radio imaging, cooperative and distributed systems for multi-agent localization/tracking), examples and applications.

Part III - Smart mobility systems

Introduction to ITS, fundamentals of traffic modelling and control, technologies for traffic monitoring, processing methods for traffic analytics, communication systems for road safety and traffic efficiency, cooperative ITS (C-ITS), vehicle-to-anything (V2X) communication for assisted/automated driving, examples and applications.

Students are expected to have a basic knowledge of communication systems.

The exam consists of a written test (2-3 numerical exercises and questions on the course contents). Optionally, students can integrate the written test result with a project on a selected topic (to be agreed with the teacher). In case of no project, the final mark is the one obtained in the written test clipped to maximum 27/30. The project can add up to 6 points.

Access restricted to students registered to the course. Lecture notes; seminars by experts on positioning, navigation and smart mobility, from university/industry (approx. 5-6 seminars per year, since 2010-2011); projects by former students; examination papers; further material and information.

Part 1 of the course - Fundamentals of localization and navigation

Part 2 of the course - Terrestrial radio positioning

Part 2 of the course - Satellite radio positioning

Part 2 of the course - Satellite radio positioning

Part 2 of the course - Satellite radio positioning

Part 3 of the course - Intelligent transportation systems

Part 3 of the course - Intelligent transportation systems