Inertial Sensors Boost Smartphone GPS Performance

GPS is power hungry and often suffers from poor signal strength in city centres. Now computer scientists have worked out how your smartphone’s inertial sensors can fill in the gaps.

If you’ve ever used a smartphone to navigate, you’ll know that one of the biggest problems is running out of juice. GPS sensors are a significant battery drain and so any journey of significant length requires some kind of external power source. Added to that is the difficulty in even getting a GPS signal in city centre locations where towering office blocks, bridges and tunnels regularly conspire to block the signal.

So a trick that reduces power consumption while increasing the device’s positioning accuracy would surely be of use.