Your Smartwatch Could Soon Know Your Location to the Centimetre

"Being in the world of hypotheticals, imagine the implications of wearing a smartwatch that doesn't just know what city you're in, but your precise location to within several centimetres. Tracking algorithms designed by researchers at the University of Otago in New Zealand have made that possible. Multiple satellite systems and sophisticated signal processing, once the province of expensive survey instruments, are now being implemented in consumer wearables. This could revolutionise the fitness, health, safety and mapping capabilities in run-of-the-mill smartwatches."

"The concept of replicating such precision in a slim smartwatch was too good to be true. But the challenges were overcome by the Otago team, who worked alongside experts from Google and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The researchers conducted tests in which they left a smartwatch in one location for four hours and estimated that position using "carrier-phase" signals, typically reserved for professional surveying. The results were impressive: the smartwatch read its position to within eight centimetres, roughly its own face width."

Researchers at the University of Otago implemented multiple satellite systems and sophisticated signal processing in a consumer smartwatch to achieve centimetre-level positioning. The team collaborated with experts from Google and the Chinese Academy of Sciences to adapt carrier-phase signal techniques, traditionally used in professional surveying, to wearable hardware. In tests a smartwatch left stationary for four hours estimated its position using carrier-phase signals and achieved accuracy within eight centimetres. The work demonstrates that high-precision GPS can move from large survey setups into slim wearables, promising advances in fitness, health, safety and mapping while raising concerns about power consumption and cost.

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