Skyhook goes hybrid

Now that Wi-Fi location pioneer Skyhook Wireless has added GPS satellites and cell towers to the mix, mobile handset owners can map locations whether they're inside, outside, rural, urban or lost somewhere in between. XPS 2.0 software allows device manufacturers, carriers or app developers to push location-based services to the mass market.

“There is really no one system that can give you your location consistently wherever you go — whether you're out hiking in the woods or in downtown Manhattan,” said Ted Morgan, CEO and founder of Skyhook. “So what we're doing is combining all those signals so that device-makers have one solution they can work with to make sure consumers get the best possible location.”

When Skyhook launched in 2003, Morgan and a team of hundreds set out to map every Wi-Fi access point, hot spot and gateway in top U.S. cities. This created the playing field for the company's first Wi-Fi positioning system, a multimode technology with location switching between WPS and GPS readings. Morgan said it was successful indoors and in urban zones, but it failed to give accurate readings in rural areas.

Even in deep urban settings, however, Assisted-GPS produces a location only 70% of the time due to blocked signals. XPS 2.0 can take info from GPS, Wi-Fi and cellular hybrid locations in four seconds compared to a 30- to 60-second window for A-GPS. In addition, creating a single hybrid calculation — using signals from GPS satellites and cell towers — allows XPS to improve Wi-Fi location accuracy by at least 35%.

Morgan said that this accuracy and speed also gives XPS three to fives times better power conservation than A-GPS alone. He said the software is targeted at manufacturers beginning to put together their 2009 devices with LBS in mind.

“[Device-makers] just need to get their feet wet, and that really just takes time and experience to understand the real issues,” Morgan said. “Unfortunately, there is a perception that GPS is worldwide and once you add a GPS chip you're all set. What people quickly learn is that people use them indoors where they don't work.”

Morgan said Skyhook is primarily competing against the need for early-stage education. The hope is that a faster, more reliable network will drive the number of location-enabled handsets on the market, thus driving consumer demand and adoption. To expedite this, Skyhook also announced it will use its fleet of field signal surveyors to build a cellular positioning system that covers major U.S. and European cities. The company aims to have full Skyhook global coverage by the end of 2008.