A network provides both positioning and communication services.

Software-defined radios (SDRs) are being developed to provide positioning and communication (POSCOMM) services inside buildings and tunnels, under tree canopies, and in other environments in which local radio- communication systems are accessible but Global Positioning System (GPS) signals are not present or are degraded. These SDRs could be especially helpful for teams of first responders (e.g., firefighters), and military personnel operating in urban settings. These SDRs are capable of navigating by use of GPS signals and can switch over to time-of-arrival (TOA) pseudolite navigation when GPS signals become unavailable, provided that signals from suitably placed TOA pseudolite transmitter nodes are available.

In a POSCOMM SDR Network, the position of a slave unit can be determined from times of arrival of signals from master units, the positions of which are known from GPS measurements.

The POSCOMM SDR system is based on relatively inexpensive commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware and software. At the present state of development, each POSCOMM SDR is a test-bed unit that includes both a GPS receiver and a transceiver that operates in a frequency band near 900 MHz. The hardware aspect of the design of the unit features a modular PC/104 configuration to facilitate rapid construction of prototypes and testing of SDR software to support advanced positioning and communication functions. [PC/104 is an industry standard for compact, stackable modules that are fully compatible (in architecture, hardware, and software) with personal-computer data- and power-bus circuitry.] The software is portable and designed for use in real-time flavors of Windows and Linux operating systems.