LoBaSS

Todays world of mobility is characterised by a great variety of exiting technologies, applications and services. Among the most promising ones is the posibility to determine the exact geographic position of a mobile user. This ability opens a door to a new world full of innovative services and applications, so-called location-based services. Thanks to GPS a worldwide localisation by satellite with a few meters accurancy has become common in our everyday life. Going inside office building, museums, or production halls satellite-based positioning systems fail and new technologies are demanded like rf-based positioning systems.

The LoBaSS project addresses the subject of location-based services together with a positioning via wireless LAN technology. The chaotic propagation of a WLAN signal within a building can be used to determine the position of a mobile device. By receiving multiple readings from different access points the characteristic profile can be compared with other profiles from a database and a high accurancy localisation can be achieved without the need of expensive additional hardware components.

By creating a flexible architecture the positioning system can be easily used by vaious location-based services. For example a location-based print service allows a mobile user to print a document to the nearest printer available. Without specifying the printers name, ip or driver the service directs the document to the nearest printer and shows a map how to get there.

Due to the flexible architecture the list of services is endless and the positioning technology is easily adaptable towards new technologies and accurancy demands.