Types of LBS

At a Glance - Location based service enables us to find the geographical location of a mobile device with its user and provide various services related to the location information. For an example, you are in a town and want to know about a nearest hotel. Here you can use your GPS attached mobile phone that can calculate the nearest one out of its current database and send it through message. So the user of a wireless phone can easily locate a specific region of his desire by using LBS.

Location-based service uses several technologies for determining the exact location of the mobile user. Here are some of the standard-based means for managing location information.

GPS - One of them is the Global Positioning System or GPS run under the United States Department of Defense. This Global Positioning System consists of 24 earth-orbiting satellites developed by the US space agency. By this a land based GPS receiver uses satellite signals to determine its own position coordinates and by taking help of these coordinates a user can point out its position on a digital map. However, to avail this service, user should have a GPS attached device or a mobile phone with GPS receiver.

E911 – Enhanced 911 is a North American telephone network that automatically determines a location of the caller seeking for emergency services like fire, accident, kidnapping and others where communicating to your place is impossible. Following a computerized telephone directory with the help of software the system makes a connection between caller line and a street address.

A call to E911 is first moves to a Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) that finds the exact location of the caller and then directs adequate service to that place. However, PSAPs are both Wireline and Wireless based that permits emergency operators to obtain the callers information, taking help of the database of both the system. Today, E911 is one of the most widely used location service in North America and Canada.

RFID - Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) method used to transmit identity of an object wirelessly by using radio waves. The identity is displays in the form of a serial number. Generally the system is to store and retrieve data by using two devices like tags and transponder. Tags are objects with electronic chips or antennas that can be attached to any other object even living beings for identifying them by using radio waves.

Wi-Fi – Wi-Fi Positioning System (WPS) that uses radio signals emitted from wireless routers to point out the exact location of any Wi-Fi enabled device like PC, laptop, PDA, Smart Phone or RFID tag. The operator providing this facility has a compiled database of every wireless access point in a particular city. The identifier unit of the router notes the database where access point is located. So the software of the system scans for access points and several signals and by comparing those to the reference database it then calculates the user’s location.

The above four positioning systems are providing several kinds of location based service for individual and industrial use. Primarily location-based service is useful when opting for navigation or emergency service. In all of the system a network operator of particular kind of service provider controls the data about the user location. This requires a massive database that is prepared and maintained by the LBS provider.