SparseGPS: energy efficient GPS acquisition via sparse approximation

The global positioning system (GPS) system is a dominant wireless technology that enables reliable location sensing for a diverse range of outdoor mobile applications. Following rising demands for location sensing, low-cost GPS receivers are becoming widely available; but their energy demands are still too high to be useful for many of these applications. For energy efficient GPS sensing, the possibility of offloading a few milliseconds of raw signal samples and leveraging the greater processing power of the cloud for obtaining a position fix is being actively investigated. In an attempt to reduce the energy cost of this data offloading operation, we propose SparseGPS: a lightweight GPS acquisition mechanism based on sparse approximation.