Positioning device, positioning system, mobile terminal, and positioning method

Abstract

A positioning device operates in cooperation with a signal receiver for receiving a plurality of signal waves arriving from at least one synchronous transmission unit including a plurality of signal transmitters that operates in synchronization with each other. The positioning device includes: a time-of-arrival detecting unit for detecting time of arrival of each of the plurality of signal waves on the basis of a reception signal output from the signal receiver and a distance difference calculating unit for calculating a difference in distance from the plurality of signal transmitters to the signal receiver as a set of observation values on the basis of a difference in the time of arrival that has been detected; and a positioning arithmetic unit. The positioning arithmetic unit calculates a time series of an estimation state vector indicating position information of the signal receiver by executing a positioning arithmetic operation based on a nonlinear Kalman filter using a time series of an observation vector indicating the set of the observation values and known position information of the plurality of signal transmitters.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.