A study on Location Aware Computing Presenter : Narendiran Visvanathan

1. A study on Location Aware Computing Presenter : Narendiran Visvanathan Instructor : Dr. Chin-Chih Chang Course : CS 898T Mobile and Wireless Networks

2. Agenda • Location aware computing • Location tracking • Location tracking technologies • Architecture • Privacy & Security issues • Applications • Future work

3. What is Location-Aware Computing? The ability to detect the exact location of the device or may be it's relative location, especially a wireless device is called location aware computing system. Devices that are aware of where they are located are location aware devices.

4. Location tracking • It is not a single technology. Rather, it’s a combination of several technologies merged together to develop system which tracks the location of objects. Some technologies that are used for location tracking are • Geographic Information Systems (GIS) • Global Positioning Systems (GPS) • Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)

5. Location tracking technologies • GIS • Captures, stores, analyze and report geographic information • Ideal for large scale location tracking • GPS • Satellites broadcasts their positions • small instrument receives signals of such satellites and calculates its position • Ideal for outdoor positioning such as farming, surveying, military use or transportation

6. Location tracking technologies (2) • RFID • A tiny battery-less microchip is attached to commodities and objects that are to be traced • Tags aren’t active all the time • Transmit only if it is prompted by a reader • Tags can be activated when the reader transmits radio waves • When the tag transmits information, it’s captured and sent to the central database • RFID could be used in exchange of UPC bar codes

7. Architecture • Positioning Platform • Privacy • Location Information • Proximity awareness • Security handler • Map service • Service InfoBase

8. Positioning platform • It collects data from all types of modules and combines them into a single position to form a virtual device • A software module is implemented in each positioning device within a platform to communicate with the devices • The platform calculates the position and makes it available to the applications

9. Privacy • Vital to protect the privacy of users • Location information, Proximity awareness are two issues that comes along with privacy • Push service: Users are sent information even if they don’t request them. Ex: advertisements, informational message • It should be protected so that the actual information is not transmitted to the service provider

10. Privacy (2) • Devices automatically transfers data when they are nearer to each other – Proximity problems • Example : PDA • It should be restricted and we should be able to define when we want to do this in what circumstances and when we don’t want to exchange data and on what conditions

11. Security • System could be compromised by false positioning sources like Bluetooth beacon with a false position • To avoid, categorize sources in to trusted & non-trusted positioning sources • Trusted: GPS module with user authentication • Non-trusted: Mobile devices with Wave LAN that has no method to authenticate them

12. Map service • Map service allows an application to retrieve maps for certain position • Relation between objects and tags are maintained in the Location Information Server (LIS) • Locator forms an interface between the locating mechanism and LIS • LIS locates objects either representing persons or resources inside areas

13. Service InfoBase • It finds the published services either by searching the central database or the internet for information that matches the criteria • The application would look into the service InfoBase for services that matches with the request • Example : When an user need to know the nearest public library, museum, or some restaurant or theatres

14. Applications Some applications follows • In companies  for managing their inventories, vehicles • In hospitals  to track wheel chairs, stretchers, medical equipments and sometimes even patients • Automobile industries deployed this technique in cars • In roadside assistance and in traffic advisories • Even 911 (emergency number in USA) works based on this location tracking technique

15. Future work • Wider use of GPS would be useful • Database advances would improve the ability to integrate the geospatial data • Implementation of more advanced WaveLAN, Bluetooth and IR positioning technique • E911 – To locate a call from mobile phones • Cyber guide project : The way the portable computers assist in exploring physical and cyber spaces

16. References 1. Waseem Besada, Towards a Single Locationawareness System, http://www.isk.kth.se/~waseem/grad-courses/location-awareness.html 2. James Nord, Kare Synnes, Peter Parnes, An Architecture for Location Aware Applications, http://csdl2.computer.org/comp/proceedings/hicss/2002/1435/09/14350293.pdf 3. Alexander Leonhardi, Device Location and Location Based Services, KuVS Summer School “Mobile Computing”, 2002 http://www.ibr.cs.tu-bs.de/events/SummerSchool2002/kss-leonhardi.pdf 4. www.cc.gatech.edu/fce/cyberguide 5. http://www.guide.lancs.ac.uk/overview.html

17. Questions ? Thank you very much for your attention! Contact: nxvisvanathan@wichita.edu