In the world of modern sport events technology can be found in various ways. The distance measurements, detection if balls are out of the bounds or simply the communication between referees in a soccer match are just examples of a wide area of technologies used in nowadays events.

A further aspect is the real-time positioning or localization of athletes during a competition. The knowledge of the exact position, speed, acceleration and additional parameters of an athlete in real-time can provide useful information to coaches, referees and sport enthusiasts. Coaches, for example, could track the covered distances, instantaneous and mean velocities and the exact time on field of their athletes. Such data would offer easier determination of overall performance and conclusions on energy expenditure. Furthermore, tracking single sportsmen can improve the entertainment factor of the event. The audience likes to get analyses of matches (e.g. the distance run by a soccer player) and real-time information about the current split times in races (e.g. in skiing) that can be provided by localization systems.

This project uses different sensors and localization techniques to obtain information about the position of athletes. Depending on the specific environment of each sport, individual systems can be found. Outdoor sports can rely on GPS reception. Indoor events usually take place in a limited court size and sensors to be used in a local positioning system could be installed at the venue in advance. Further, inertial sensors provide additional information about the movement of the athlete. After obtaining sufficient sensor data, the gathered information is filtered and a data fusion process provides the current position of the athlete in real-time.