Global positioning automatic vehicle location system

Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) is a unique facility covering over 43 square miles. The Emergency Management and Response Office (EM&R) is required to respond, provide Incident Command (IC), and coordination for all Laboratory emergencies. This requires IC`s and support staff to respond to the actual scene of the incident. Since the IC is under numerous constraints and stress, the office wanted the capability of locating the EM&R vehicles on an electronic map. An automated vehicle location (AVL) system was required for the additional safety of the emergency response personal. The requirements for the AVL system include total automatic tracking and low cost. After careful consideration, it was determined that the most efficient and cost effective system would be based on packet radio technology as the transmission media. The location is determined by the Department of Defense Global Positioning System (GPS). The system that was designed and constructed required four components to be interfaced and communicate with each other. The first component was a GPS receiver which actually provides the location information, equipped with a digital interface to communicate location information remotely. The second component is a modem that interfaces the GPS digital interface information to a radio. The third component is the radio itself which allows for the actual information transfer from the remote GPS receiver and modem. The fourth component is the software package that provides moving maps and displays the vehicle location on that map. The equipment was all commercial off-the-shelf that only required proper integration and packaging for the AVL application. This paper describes the steps taken in the integration of the equipment into the AVL package