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When GPS drops out, fiber optics fill in the gaps
Researchers combined GPS with fiber-optic sensing to keep tracking accurate during outages, including on lower-power devices.
Image: TechXplore
A research team led by Queen Mary University of London says it has built a positioning system that keeps tracking people even when GPS becomes blocked, noisy, or disappears entirely. The system, called Joint DAS and GNSS (JDG), was presented at the IEEE International Conference on Communications in Glasgow.
JDG combines conventional satellite positioning with Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS), which turns existing fiber-optic cables under roads and sidewalks into highly sensitive vibration sensors. As people move nearby, the cables pick up tiny disturbances that can be translated into motion patterns.
In a real-world trial in southern England, volunteers walked along a route while the researchers recorded both GPS data and vibration signals from a roadside fiber-optic cable. The team then fed the combined data into a deep-learning model that continued predicting a person’s location even when GPS coverage was unreliable.
According to the researchers, the results were strong: JDG consistently beat GPS-only tracking and other prediction methods, and stayed accurate during complete GPS outages. It also held up on lower-powered devices that collect fewer location points, which the team says could make it useful for a broad range of smartphones and IoT sensors.
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The collaboration included researchers from Queen Mary University of London, Xi’an Jiaotong University in Xi’an, P.R. China, Pandit Deendayal Energy University in Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India, and Chicago State University in Chicago.
The paper is titled “An Augmented GNSS-DAS Architecture for Continuous and Robust Positioning” by Kaiwei Wang et al., presented at ICC 2026 - IEEE International Conference on Communications (2026). The reported applications include smart transportation, emergency response, and autonomous navigation, especially in cities and in indoor or underground spaces where GPS is notoriously unreliable.
Frontier Editor
Dan is our resident futurist, covering electric mobility, space exploration, and the smart home. He's interested in atoms just as much as bits. Whether it's a new battery chemistry, a reusable rocket, or a protocol that finally makes IoT devices talk to each other, Dan breaks down the engineering that pushes humanity forward.
via TechXplore
