Location: The portal on Satellite Navigation, Positioning & Timing

Location, location, location. Long the mantra of the realestate industry, location now is the hot new buzz at the core of an emerging cornucopia of services being considered by wireless carriers and others around the world. The market for consumer and especially business-oriented location- based services (LBS) is expected to grow substantially over the next several years.

The global positioning system (GPS) is taking center stage as the key location-enabling technology of choice. By itself or in conjunction with network assistance, the location accuracy provided by GPS is revolutionizing LBS, and today the technology has evolved where it is small enough, robust enough and affordable enough to be used in a variety of mass market wireless devices under the most challenging conditions. Wireless carriers, handset vendors and makers of other wireless devices eyeing LBS are eager to jump into this arena, but after the decision is made to proceed with an LBS application, these businesses need to carefully consider all the tradeoffs involved in actually implementing a solution before committing to a particular approach. Defining the service is just the beginning of the process, and many other questions need to be considered while creating a Satellite Positioning System (SPS) –Galileo, GPS or other satellite based positioning solution, questions that require specialized expertise to ensure the appropriate tradeoffs are made.

SiRF Technology has created this white paper to help companies looking at location-based services gain a better understanding of issues they will confront and the tradeoffs they will have to make as they start to architect their system and begin designing their products. Location-enabling wireless devices is about more than simply dropping in a SPS chipset or engine. It requires a systems approach to designing the right solution for each particular application. And it requires a SPS vendor with considerable systems integration and testing expertise who can work alongside the design team to help create the best solution to meet changing requirements.

• LOCATION-BASED SERVICES
Location-based services refers to a broad range of applications that require a position as a principle input to obtain the desired result. The position data could be in any of several forms – a town name, a ZIP code, a street address or latitude and longitude coordinates– entered manually, or through some form of location-sensing technology.

This paper will focus on one particular segment of the LBS market – wireless LBS. In this case, a wireless device, typically a handset, works either alone or in combination with equipment on the wireless network to determine the position. Once the position is determined, this information is used as input to the LBS application, which may reside on a server on the network or on the wireless device. A number of technologies may be employed to determine the position of the wireless device, although the high-accuracy requirements of Enhanced-911 and E-112 regulations and other high-value LBS applications are best being met through the adoption of SPS technology and network assisted SPS, or A-SPS. Most likely, SPS will work in conjunction with other less accurate positioning technologies to afford the most robust service under all conditions.

The LBS market today is still relatively small, but as carriers roll out their 3G networks and services, the number of location-sensitive wireless handsets will mushroom, with the potential to make wireless LBS the largest of all the LBS market segments. LBS and the growth in the number of mobile devices are tightly interlinked.

• LOCATE OR NAVIGATE?
Rather than seek the LBS “killer app,” smart service providers are realizing the best approach for successful LBS application rollout today is to narrow and specialize the functionality of LBS applications for specific niche consumer and commercial markets and use targeted marketing to promote them. While the core functionality is similar across all LBS applications, the focus of a child tracker service (knowing the location of a child, sending an alert if the child leaves a “zone of safety,” tracking vehicle speed and location) will be very different from a tourist information service (knowing the locations of restaurants, hotels, museums and other points of interest, schedules and locations of events, transportation, etc.). Rather than a one-size-fits-all approach, each application must treat LBS markets individually, be tailored to meet the needs of the target market, from menu organization and terminology to the dialogs and kind of information links offered, even if the overall functionality is the same.

If Location is the Answer, Then What are the Questions?