Location Based Services

Applications
Title	Location Based Services
Author(s)	GMV.
Level	Basic
Year of Publication	2011

Location Based Services (LBS) include applications that depend on the user location to provide a service/information that is relevant to the user at that location.

LBS normally use mobile devices with positioning ability to provide the service or information to the user. LBS can be used for personal or professional purposes although most of the services covered here are for personal use since professional services will be covered in other sections.

History of Location Based Services

Location based Services resulted from the convergence of 3 technologies in one device: mobile internet access, positioning and rich user interfaces. Until the late 1990's the available mobile devices mostly supported only voice and SMS and had few user interface capabilities. Although these technologies could teoretically already support very crude location based services (using SMS and GSM based localization), only after the introduction of WAP and internet access in mobile phones there is news of the first generally available location based services.

The 1999's Palm VII is considered the first LBS capable mobile device although the LBS applications it provided relied on zip code information to have the user positioning.

Also in 1999, WAP enabled phones start to appear on the market providing internet access and a richer user interface than what was previously available.

The service FriendZone is considered the first LBS service to be offered by a mobile phone operator in May 2001 after a preliminary trial that started in January 2001.

The improvements on user interfaces and the availability of mobile phones with high resolution touch-screens made posible applications with richer interfaces sometimes comparable to desktop computers.

Initially the location was provided by GSM localization techniques (Cell Id, TDOA, E-OTD). With the availability of cheap and small GNSS chipsets more and more mobile have satellite positioning embeded in the devices.

Currently, navigation technologies in consumer devices such as mobile phones are enabling a massive boom in location-based services, with new commercial opportunities based on the ability of users to identify their precise location relative to services, amenities and other people.

Location Based Services categorisation

There is a wide variety of services that can be considered location based services. The types of services and applications that can be considered part of LBS is very heterogenous.

For the purpose of this categorisation it were considered only services or applications that require a multimedia mobile interface, internet access and positioning. Some services or applications that can be considered as LBS are being described in different sections some of them because they don't necessarily include the three previously mentioned components (multimedia, internet and positioning) or can be best fitted in other application groups. For instance, navigation was included in the Road Applications.

Location based Information Streams

Location based Informations Streams consists on pushing information to the user depending on its location and on the assumption that this information will be usefull and welcomed by the user.

The information provided by these services can vary from information of nearest services or stores to alerts on traffic jams and location based advertising. In some cases the information is provided without user request while on other the information is provided on request.

Detailed information about Location based Information Streams can be found here

These services can run through an application that will either compare the user position with an internal database or with an online database through a content server. Normally these services can be configured to provide only information that the user finds useful.

Tourist Information

Tourist Information applications provide guidance to tourists could be fitted in the scope of