How does LBS work?

Location based service (LBS) is the application that users use to locate its own position with the help of some basic components like mobile devices, mobile communication network, service provider like the Global Positioning Service (GPS), data and yellow pages for the service station. In spite of all mentioned constituents, Internet is the major communicating medium between the user and service provider.

First of all when the user activates the positioning device in the mobile unit, the positioning system like calculates the exact position of the receiver. In case of GPS, the US operated satellite signals are used to calculate the position of the device. GPS system is almost accurate but needs some basic requirements in the device used. The cellular device should have GPS radio receiver, an antenna and a processor to calculate. By using the cellular network, the GPS receiver sends the data to the server network and after determining the exact position the result is transmitted back to the mobile phone. The user then demands his/her required queries and seeks answer, which the operator after analyzing data from its own directory resends it to the user through a local server after collecting it from application server.

In case of other LBS systems that run without any satellite signals basically depend on the radio signals transmitted from different ground based station. The receiver considers its own position taking account some of the surrounding base stations. This requires some special software and more and more ground base stations for better accuracy. In this way needs more investment in infrastructure for establishing ground-based stations but can cover almost all areas unlike GPS that has some coverage limitation. As far as accuracy is concerned, it varies between positioning technologies.

Hence in the whole process, the user’s location information is first stored in a gateway that also exchanges information between the user and operator. Here after obtaining and detecting the user’s demand, the application server chooses the appropriate data from its present directory and even sometimes collects content data from a different server (data provider) through Internet and then alerts the user through message (SMS). The service provider also inform about additional information like weather, route condition to a specific place, time etc. However, the service is totally depends on the geographical information database or GIS. As soon as the device receives data sent by the LBS provider, its been displayed on the handset screen in form of picture, graphs or maps.