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A study on Location Aware Computing
Presenter : Narendiran Visvanathan
Instructor : Dr. Chin-Chih ChangCourse : CS 898T Mobile and Wireless Networks
Agenda
Location aware computing Location tracking Location tracking technologies Architecture Privacy & Security issues Applications Future work
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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.
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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)
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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
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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
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Architecture
Positioning Platform Privacy
Location Information Proximity awareness
Security handler Map service Service InfoBase
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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