Collecting and Providing Location Information: The Location Trader

摘要

Although enthusiasm for the "killer-application" in the mobile sector has decreased, location based services still seem to be valuable mobile services. Today's location based services are mostly forced to use the proprietary location information provided by mobile network operators. The approach that is discussed here depicts a way of locating a mobile client independently from certain network operators and in heterogeneous networks. The location trader system collects and provides location information for users and provider of location based services. The accumulated interaction of each user of the user community enables to generate reliable location information in the location trader database. Due to sufficient incentives gained by using the Location Trader users are acting as investors and donators by providing implicit and explicit location information to the location trader system. The Location Trader project examines the technical and economical implications of this concept and tries to quantify the generated added value. The focus of this paper is the implementation of a Location Trader prototype.