Polaris Wireless, a global specialist in high accuracy, software-based location solutions, today announced its Polaris Wireless Location Signatures (Polaris WLSTM) Hybrid technology has established new benchmarks in location performance, including better accuracy, reduced time to fix and improved battery consumption, for indoor and dense urban environments, according to field trials conducted by major wireless carriers globally.
The trials, performed in multiple continents, are claimed to demonstrate that Polaris's Hybrid solution performs better than A-GPS alone in both indoor and complex environments, such as dense urban areas with high rise buildings and many signal obstructions. In addition, Polaris Wireless announced that its solution is 4G LTE ready with the Hybrid solution supporting multiple cellular air interfaces (2G/3G/4G) in a single platform in support of carrier's multi-mode services and devices.
"The ability to locate wireless handsets and devices in indoor environments is particularly important since that is where most users originate voice and data calls," said Professor Per K. Enge, a leading researcher at Stanford University's GPS Laboratory. "Location performance in places like high rise office buildings and indoor shopping malls is critical to meeting consumer and enterprise demand as well as emergency call requirements. Further, with the established trend of mobile wireless replacing landline services, the importance of accurate, timely and efficient location indoors will continue to rapidly grow."
"The advantage of the Polaris Wireless solution is that it works well in non line-of-sight, cluttered environments – with indoors being a particularly challenging environment for cellular location systems," said Dr. Marty Feuerstein, CTO of Polaris Wireless. "WLS capitalizes on complex obstructions and shadowing to improve location performance. In addition, the Polaris Wireless Hybrid location solution for 4G LTE networks enables truly global and ubiquitous location-aware applications that offer consumers far more than today's turn-by-turn navigation."
North American carriers have recently conducted 3G location system trials, testing indoor and outdoor wireless location performance over an urban trial area of 10 square kilometers. Polaris out performed other solutions with a consistent accuracy of 47 to 59 meters versus 230 to 250 meters at 67th percentile. As further confirmation, a major wireless service provider in Asia recently tested 3G location performance, including accuracy, time to fix and battery consumption in urban and suburban settings. Results demonstrated Polaris Hybrid solution performance of 50 to 60 meters in 5 seconds time to fix compared with alternatives at 130 to 140 meters with 20 to 30 seconds time to fix. In addition, significant improvements in battery consumption were demonstrated to support pervasive location applications requiring frequent fixes, such as zone-based mobile marketing services.
The trial results are said to show that the Polaris Wireless approach to determining handset location, independent of handset capabilities and features such as Wi-Fi, is well suited to indoor and dense urban environments. Like a fingerprint's pattern of lines and swirls, a location can be identified by a unique set of values including measurements of neighboring cell signal strengths, time delays and other network parameters. The Polaris WLSTM solution collects this information and uses it to match incoming signals to an extensive geo-referenced database of values to determine highly accurate handset location-regardless of the type of environment. In fact, shadowing from large buildings, walls and other clutter enriches the location signature and increases accuracy.
The Polaris WLS solution is available on all air major cellular interfaces including GSM, cdma2000, UMTS and LTE. In particular, LTE networks, one of the 4G standards that will usher in next generation broadband wireless performance, greatly surpass the 3G networks of today. LTE promises a truly broadband experience capable of supporting a new world of advanced voice and data applications, all based on Internet Protocol. The proliferation of 4G networks promises to create a single, unified global wireless infrastructure for content-rich applications, where location awareness is ubiquitous and transparent. Location-based services will work seamlessly across continents and oceans, driving the wide-scale development and deployment of powerful applications that thrive on frequent and accurate location updates on a mass scale and in real-time. Today, the Polaris WLS solution is commercially deployed with twenty 2G wireless carriers in the US and three 3G wireless carriers in Asia.
Location-based services are already available on today's 3G networks-most notably on the Apple iPhone 3G-however, these applications are primarily built around basic turn-by-turn navigation tools. More pervasive and interactive mobile social networks, multiplayer gaming, zone-based coupon/advertising promotions and asset tracking will drive the need for high-accuracy, high-yield and low-latency location-based services on 4G networks.