SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR LOCATION REPRESENTATION USING A DISCRETE GLOBAL GRID SYSTEM

摘要

Embeddings of spherical triangles onto a planar surface permit locations on a sphere to be represented as cells on the planar surface. Embeddings can define paths based on one or more sets of great circles on the sphere which can in turn be based on rotations of an icosahedron about various axes. Distances between locations as well as locations themselves can be determined as integer values unlike conventional latitude/longitude based systems that require floating point arithmetic. Some locations correspond to cells on different paths defined by one or more sets of great circles. Distance between two locations can be estimated as a minimum of distances associated with the cell locations on the different paths. Methods for processing data defined with respect to an origin point in three-dimensional space include establishing a set of concentric spherical shells with the origin point as their origin and establishing a discrete global grid on each of the concentric spherical shells. Target locations are assigned in the three-dimensional space using a corresponding index on a spherical shell.