Foursquare where are you? Why better location data means better location-based services

From cell site ID to GPS to Wi-Fi triangulation, service providers, device-makers and app developers face a complex landscape in figuring out how best to receive mobile location data — not to mention to ensure it is as accurate as possible.

Because as popular as location-based services like Foursquare or Google Maps are proving to be, nothing will kill the golden goose as much as subscribers trying to use those services with location data that is, at best, just off enough to call into question their coffee shop “mayorship” and, at worst, places them somewhere completely across town. Precise location data and well-tested location positioning capabilities become even more important as location-based services become more mainstream and eventually revenue-producing for device, app and service providers.

To help all of the different parties in the emerging location-based services ecosystem get a better grip on location data, test vendor Spirent this week announced a new Wi-Fi positioning test tool, the GSS5700 Wi-Fi Positioning Access Point Simulator.

The tool can work in lab simulation environments – rather than forcing tests to be done out in the field – making it easy to test how location systems (typically including chipsets, radios and software algorithms) work and scale, said Nigel Wright, vice president of wireless for Spirent. The tool can simulate up to 48 simultaneous Wi-Fi access points in the lab.

Initially, the Wi-Fi location tool works as a stand-alone simulator; later this year Spirent will more fully integrate it into its full test platform and with other LBS testing scenarios, including GPS testing. Specifically, the GSS5700 can be combined with Spirent’s GPS and multi-GNSS Simulation Systems to test hybrid Wi-Fi and GPS/GNSS technologies, as well as integrate with Spirent’s 8100 ULTS and C2K-ATS Location Technology Solutions to test hybrid location technologies in UMTS and CDMA mobile devices.

The delivery of user location information has been evolving over the years and is becoming vitally important, as new smart phone devices like the iPhone and Google Android devices enable perhaps the first truly successful round of location-based services.

The earliest method of location detection involved determining a person’s location relative to the cell base station they were registered to. That approach could be fairly accurate – or not at all – depending on cell density characteristics.

Next up was GPS or hybrid-GPS approaches, which use global positioning satellites to determine location. The upside is that now is a very mature technology and thanks to the latest generation of smartphones, increasingly ubiquitous. However, GPS radios can drain device batteries, and GPS signals don’t always penetrate buildings or dense areas extremely well.
Finally, Wi-Fi mapping and triangulation has come into play, with servers detecting where a device has logged into a Wi-Fi location (by MAC address) and then using ever-updating maps to figure out their precise location. Again, positioning by Wi-Fi is fairly accurate – though not perfect – and Wi-Fi radios like GPS have a battery cost. But it’s also spawned now-mature Wi-Fi positioning vendors like Skyhook, which helps power iPhone location.

Increasingly, location is determined by a combination of all those approaches, with fall-back from one to another when radios aren’t turned on or a particular positioning approach fails, Wright said. That makes a test solution that can span all the location opposites very important, he said.

Spirent believes its location test gear will appeal to four main users: chipset providers, device manufacturers, network operators and independent test labs. For any of these classes of users, “once they’ve validated fundamental operation [of location positioning] then – and we saw this with GPS as well – players try to differentiate themselves on performance and optimize their [positioning] results to gain a level of competitive advantage,” Wright said.

More information about Spirent’s Wi-Fi positioning test solution can be found at http://www.spirent.com/Wireless/Hybrid_positioning.aspx.