Dr Kari Clark - University College London

Tomorrow’s key society-transformative wireless devices, such as connected cars and augmented reality glasses, require positioning – the calculation of their location – to sub-30 cm accuracies. However, the satellite-based navigation systems currently used cannot perform positioning underground, within buildings, or between buildings and are vulnerable to solar flares, cyberattacks, and jamming.

Dr Clark aims to achieve sub-30 cm geo-positioning of wireless devices using 6G mobile networks. This alternative approach recognises that time synchronisation accuracy limits the currently possible positioning accuracy with wireless networks to only 10 s of metres. He explores achieving sub-30 cm positioning accuracies using mobile networks through two families of approaches: The transmission of optical clock signals through optical fibre, and the measurement and compensation of the optical fibre time-of-flight, which changes because of effects such as temperature.