Forget GPS, Hello WPS

No France writes "A company known as skyhook wireless has announced the commercial availability of its Wi-Fi Positioning System, or WPS. The company has compiled a database of every wireless access point it can find in a given city. When a mobile user running th Skyhook client is in a recorded area, their position is calculated by selecting the surrounding signals and comparing them to the reference database. Currently there are 25 US cities mapped, including New York City, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Apparently this device is accurate to within 20-40 meters, though one has to wonder how well it deals with people moving their wireless access points."

Comments

Too Simple

[nxtr]

They might as well give everybody a peice of paper with a huge X on it that says 'You are here'.

What a joke...

[nemostultae]

Apparently this device is accurate to within 20-40 meters

Hell, I can guess where I am to that accuracy. I thought GPSs where accurate within 5-8 meters nowadays. And this sounds really useful out in the open ocean, you know, where all those rouge wireless access points hang out.

Re:What a joke...

[Bogwood]

But vanilla GPS just isn't accurate in urban canyons. In London's docklands area (high buildings) GPS gives accuracy in the 200 to 400m region due to multipath effects. As well as obscuring satellites, tall buildings cause reflections of GPS signals which can cause large errors in the pseudo-range calculations making accurate position reporting very difficult. Places like NYC or Chicago are useless for GPS.

I would imagine that supplementing GPS with other position determining mechanisms (like WiFi) could be beneficial in these circumstances.

Re:Been there, done that!

[suineg]

Well think about the fact that you pretty much need to be within 20 to 40 meters of an AP to even pick the signal up then it would make absolute sense.