Location-based Services Fundamentals and Operation

Chapter 1. Introduction

What are Location-based Services?

Although Location-based Services(LBSs) have been an issue in the field of mobile communications for many years, there exists neither a common definition nor a common terminology for them. For example, the terms location-based service, location-aware service, location-related service, and location service are often interchangeably used. One reason for this dilemma might lie in the fact that the character and appearance of such services have been determined by different communities, especially the telecommunications sector and the ubiquitous computing area.

The GSM Association, which is a consortium of 600 GSM network operators, simply defines LBSs as services that use the location of the target for adding value to the service, where the target is the "entity" to be located (and this entity is not necessarily also the user of the service). This abstract definition raises of course the question of what a concrete added value is. The GSM Association (2003) presents three examples where the added value is given by the filtering of information (for example, selecting nearby points of interest), showing the location of a target on a map, or automatically activating the service when a target enters or leaves a predefined location. Another similarly abstract definition of LBSs is given by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), which is an international federation of many national standardization authorities aiming at providing ...