Mobile Phone Location Determination in Urban and Rural Areas Using Enhanced Observed Time Difference Technique

An extensive research has been carried out to evaluate method for the tracking of mobile equipment using it’s base stations in a GSM network. Enhanced Observed Time Difference (E-OTD) method is one of the promising and fairly developed positioning technologies that has been standardized for GSM systems. This Method has been utilized in this research work to locate the mobile equipment’s position. Urban-area measurements were performed in an area consisting of both micro GSM900 and GSM1800 cells. Measurements were carried out in a rural area with macro-cell structure having diameters of 20 to 30 kilometers. Simulation runs were performed with only two neighbouring BTSs, to show the difference when three or four BTSs are used in the E-OTD location estimate calculation. The location accuracy increases when E-OTD is performed with four or more BTSs. The difference in the location estimate when more than four or just four BTSs are involved, is found to be minimum.