I&M in navigation systems [Framing I&M Topics

Abstract

Thanks to the advancements made over the years in several areas of engineering, navigation-based services are ubiquitous. Requirements on the services are even tighter in recent times because of the expectations to have the ability to navigate anywhere and anytime, even in indoor environments, where the usual outdoor global positioning systems cease to offer reliable information. Thus, new areas of application research are emerging, e.g., indoor navigation and positioning, location-based services, navigation for impaired people and in ambient assisted living environments. Specific established domains, such as airborne and naval applications, or navigation for robotic applications benefit from new technologies and their results. This framework of technologies will be completed by the expected deployment of new infrastructures, such as the European Union’s Galileo Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), or the operational improvements in the Russian GLONASS, and the advancements made in the realization of the Chinese GNSS, the BeiDou [1], not to forget the U.S. government’s GPS, as the first accessible GNSS. Business markets also offer motivations for applied and theoretical research in this subject, with 200 new startup companies in recent years, according to [2]. Since the basis of navigation location, i.e., on positioning and orientation measurements, in recent years the IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement (TIM) has experienced a significant increase in the number of papers – both submitted and accepted – in this field. Unfortunately, many submitted papers have been rejected because they fall clearly outside the journal scope. This fact motivated us – as researchers in the field involved in the Editorial Committee of the journal – to write this paper to specify what can be considered an I&M technical contribution in the field of navigation systems.