Location Determination Technology Opportunities and Developments: Q&A with Andrew Wireless' Martin Dawson

(Top News, 2 Sep 2008)

By Stephen Las Marias, Editor


Martin Dawson, Chief Product Architect for Andrew Wireless Solutions Geometrix Mobile Location Center, discusses with Wireless Design and Development Asia about location information servers (LIS) and their market drivers, and some of the latest issues in the location-based services (LBS) market. Excerpts:

What is LIS and what are the applications it supports?
The concept behind LIS is a set of protocols and architectures that the Internet Engineering Task Force has defined, and the idea is to provide a common service—location service—regardless of the kind of network you attach to—be it in an IP network, or a data cell access, a WiMAX network, or an enterprise network.

When your device connects, location information useful to that device will be available. For instance, Google Maps. One of the things on Google Maps is that when you want to know how to get somewhere, you also have to know where you are, before you start, in order to get the directions. The location service can provide that 'You are here' information, whatever network you are attached into, and your device can discover the location information server and the protocol called HTTP-enabled Location Delivery (HELD), and your device simply ask that location information server for the location. The server calculates the location and provides that information back to the device. The protocols for finding that location service and to using it are the same regardless of the kind of network you attached to.

We have location services in cellular networks for many years now, and we have a mature product in the Geometrix Mobile Location that does that, but the way you interact with different protocols you use are network-specific, whereas IP location is about providing a common protocol.

How do you see the LBS value chain and ecosystem developing? What are the key enablers to make LBS a success?
One of the key enablers is for a reliable and consistent location service to exist in networks. Devices can use GPS, but we have to recognize that not every device does have GPS, and in particular the performance of the GPS isn't reliable, particularly in the dense side of the environment or in an indoor situation; you might not have a GPS location at all.

And in fact, a lot of applications are more interested in, for example, the latitude or longitude, or area geographically you are in, or the exact street address. An example of that is in emergency services; if you are calling with VoIP to a 112 emergency service mainly to dispatch an ambulance or fire truck to your location, they would actually want to have the specific street address to your location.

GPS is handy and is certainly powering a lot of innovation in terms of the things that people do, in particular in the handsets, for getting location. But what's really going to fire up location capabilities is a consistent and guaranteed ability to get location whenever you attached to a network. That is why we had the idea of location information servers, and that consistent and constant way of asking for location information.

What do you consider the most remarkable development trend in the segment so far?
I've been involved in the location side of things for 10 years or so, and we've been incrementally developing the capability around cellular networks, we focus on emergency services, and the commercial services, and different technologies that are being developed just by taking the simple 'I know what certain cell you are in; I can give you an approximate location' to very sophisticated location measurement technologies that use timing and signal strength, within the area or coverage, like GPS, Galileo, GLONASS, and most satellite systems that can provide location as well.

And we are not at the end of it; systems will just get more and more accurate, dedicated to location determination as well. I don't think there's any one revolution that's going to suddenly make an explosion on the scene, although it is definitely being the case as what has occurred before in the past, one is the imperative for emergency services to have the location information, which creates the imperative to the networks the location that enable themselves—that creates the foundation from which other businesses will grow.

The other one is the amount of computing power that we are now able to get into the devices; and the miniaturization associated with the CPUs and the GPS chips—they can now be built in into the devices. The amount of sophistication in user interactivity, the amount of processing power that can now be held in the hand, to be able to be able to support things like real-time navigation, are incredibly powerful in terms of making the location determination more attractive.

LBS end-user devices, location technology and development platforms are now available, but the seamless integration of location services in the overall mobile experience seems to be an issue. How do you see this affecting the uptake of LBS?
Yes, and that is where I go back to the proposition behind the LIS and standardized protocols for doing this. We are seeing a lot of innovation, and if we look at things like Skyhook Wireless, which is trying to hook the world, all the database, all the wireless access points in the world—so you can connect anywhere or you can see wireless access points—I think it is great that they are doing it, because it is telling the world that these sort of things are useful, and people are interested in it and people do get value out of it.

Whereas if they rely on network operators to sort of make a move and pattern the network for the location capability, the conservative nature of network operators will dominate, resulting in some sort of a delay in showing the world what the value of these kinds of services are.

I think now that that they've done that, and the obvious demand has been created, network operators are feeling threatened by these third parties and providers trying to build facilities over the top of their network. I say it has found the drive to create location services in the networks before the point that it can be done in a non-proprietary way.

What can you say about the development status and trends of LBS and positioning technology in Asia?
Asia is very interesting. The Asian market is very innovative, and there has been a great deal of interest in location services here. And what we noted in Asia is that the operators are willing to experiment a great deal more, and they actually are prepared to drive proprietary solutions.

I have seen that there are also a lot of interest in other technologies for determining location—upload time, difference of arrival, signal strength measurements—there is a great deal of interest in those.

There will come a point in time where, because it is not a technical issue anymore, and because the standards have matured, there should be a movement toward more standards-based solution across the Asian market.

What do you believe are the technologies that will have the greatest potential for generating new revenue streams for operators/service providers?
LBS has a value proposition—subscriptions-based models, advertising-based models¡ªfor instance, doing localized advertising on web pages so that if you go to a particular webpage, the advertising banners you see are derived from and relevant to your location. All those sorts of applications; locations are just out there, the technologies to determining location, I think, are going to continually evolve to become more accurate and more reliable.

The general principle of location determination is the more measurements you can get, the better you can make it. There will be a steady progression toward more accuracy and more techniques. Ultimately, the better the quality of the location information, the better the user experience that is going to be, and the more people that will want to use LBS.

Any predictions in terms of future wireless technologies?
I think when it comes to wireless technologies and the progress of the world, the main thing that the technology does is allow us to have the internet wherever we are, and whenever we actually want to access it. We are just going to see a progression of wireless access technologies that will allow us to fill more dark holes so we can get the internet wherever we want, and that can be as fast as possible.

And the faster it performs, the more energy information you put into the air, and the more cells that are have to be built to be able to do that. That's going to be so that we can have as much possible bandwidth in the air. And from a location perspective, the smaller and smaller the cells get, the more accurate we can get the location as well, so that is a good thing for us as far as location is concerned.

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