Supporting ubiquitous location information in interworking 3G and wireless networks

Location-Based Services (LBSs) will be one of the main sources of revenue for wireless network operators. Emergency services, information services, fleet-monitoring services, tracking the location of vehicles, objects and users are some of the most promising location applications. The current interworking between the third-generation systems and the wireless networks, along with the spreading of the new mobile devices equipped with multi location sensing technologies, pave the ground to new and more favourable services. Wireless Internet Service Providers (WISPs) need to take into account several elements for ensuring valuable LBSs. The adopted location platforms should be able to leverage the different features of the wireless networks and of the existing positioning techniques in order to always provide ubiquitous LBSs with high accuracy across heterogeneous scenarios. Moreover, the adopted platform architecture and its protocols need to be carefully designed for providing highly scalable and interoperable services. For instance, the use of open standards can favourWISPs interoperability and hence multi-vendors LBSs integration. We first present the elements involved in high-quality LBSs provisioning. Then a possible two-tier open-standard based architecture for inferring and exchanging indoor and outdoor location information through heterogeneous wireless networks is presented. Privacy and security issues are also discussed.