Wireless Positioning

An anonymous reader writes "This Intel-written whitepaper introduces a way to determine location with the aid of freely accessible, nearby radio sources, such as fixed Bluetooth devices, 802.11 access points, and GSM cell towers. Basically, the device reads the IDs of these local 'radio beacons' (each of which has a unique or semi-unique ID), looks up their positions in a locally-cached database, and performs a computation akin to triangulation. Intel created Place Lab in an effort to satisfy the emerging requirement for location-awareness within mobile devices such as smartphones, PDAs, and laptops, or even moving vehicles. According to the whitepaper, over four million of the required radio beacons have already been mapped."

Comments

Re:Why not GPS

[thc69]

Because this is a neato satellite-free system. Also, because (maybe) it can be done entirely in software on existing hardware. From TFA:

Despite these efforts, building and deploying location-aware applications that are usable by a wide variety of people in everyday situations is arguably no easier now than it was ten years ago. First and foremost, current location systems do not work where people spend most of their time; coverage in current systems is either constrained to outdoor environments or limited to a particular building or campus with installed sensing infrastructure. Applications like location-aware instant messaging fall flat if they only work for a fraction of users or only during a fraction of a user's day.

Second, existing location technologies have a high cost of entry to both users and application developers. Many location systems require expensive infrastructure, time-consuming calibration, or special tags, beacons, and sensors. The privacy cost to the many stakeholders is also typically ignored or considered only after deployment.

Maybe it can be combined with GPS for better accuracy, too.

Re:Huh?

[sdirrim]

Oops, never mind. But couldn't this be hacked to determine where a given person is at any time? They better have tight security on this!

What's the deal with GPS on cell phones?

[swb]

OK, this is kind of off-topic, and I realize the idea is that cell phone companies want to charge you for everything, but...what's the deal with the GPS/location thing on my phone?

Why can't they tell me where I am on that thing using the same info they'd send to 911? I'm not even sure the "Get it Now" payware applications can access it.

It just seems like such an obvious extension of the cell phone, especially since they've already added the location technology.

Re:GPS

[Ion Berkley]

Or it could just be that GPS doesn't work indoors or in urban canyons....how many AP's are placed outside with a clear view of the sky???

Auto channel selection?

[ThJ]

Does anyone know why access points even -have- fixed channels? If I can install Kismet on my Linksys WAP54G and scan for access points, can't the access point itself do the same, and put itself on the first free channel with the least noise on it? Wireless NICs scan the channels anyway, so I don't see why this isn't feasable.