Buildings Are a Killer For GPS But We Like Them

GPS Business News
May 28th, 2010

Getting a quick and accurate mobile location fix indoors and in 'urban canyons' is vital if location-based advertising is to be truly effective. That's the opinion of Manlio Allegra, CEO and co-founder of Polaris Wireless, which provides a software-based location system for mobile phones.

The Santa Clara, California head-quartered company has developed its Wireless Location Signatures (WLS) technology based on the fact that every location has a unique radio frequency (RF) signature, which is determined by signals from surrounding cell phone towers.

Allegra said this allows it to get a quick and accurate location fix on mobile devices in cities and indoors. "Our sweet spot is the dense urban environment and indoors, where we do about 50-60 metres accuracy for 67% of the calls," he said.

"GPS in those environments defaults to Cell-ID since it doesn't have a consistent accuracy because it doesn't get a signal from the satellites. Then in dense urban areas it has this 'urban canyon' effect, where the GPS antenna can't see the satellite and gives a fix of 200-300 metres accuracy. This doesn't give the consumer the quality of service you want to give now."

How important a problem is that to be solved? Allegra said it is crucial - not least because two-thirds of cellphone calls today are made indoors and he believes this is going to keep rising.

"Right now there is Cell-ID, which is a crude measure of location and doesn't provide the consistent location that people expect," he said. "In the future, the 1-10 solution - one second to fix accuracy within 10 metres - is our objective. That will trigger some applications like mobile marketing for indoor shopping malls and retail, which I think will be very important."

Polaris was founded in 1999 to provide location for E911 emergency services in the US. At that time the dominant technologies being deployed for the emergency services either required a handset change or, in the case of U-TDOA (triangulation), forced the operator to re-wire the network.

Allegra said both these involved big costs and deployment times. So they began offering the original WLS software technology as an alternative. "We went to the operators saying you can keep the same handset base - so you don't need to spend any money marketing new handsets - and you don't need to spend any money rewiring the network because it's a software solution," he said.

Polaris is now deployed in 22 networks in the US - the 23rd is going to be announced in the next 30 days - and has been profitable since 2005.

Allegra said that in 2004 they recognised the benefits of using their technology alongside GPS - essentially to complement each technology's performance in places where one works well and the other doesn't.

"GPS works well in rural and suburban areas where our technology doesn't work as well because we need base stations and buildings," he said. "Usually buildings are the killer for GPS but we like them - the more buildings the better.

"So combining the two technologies we have made this hybrid system which does 50 metres accuracy for 67% of the calls."

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