Life-saving implications of E911 Phase II
thewherebusiness.com
October 4th, 2010
The adoption of E911 Phase II accuracy compliance rules by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the US last month will require wireless carriers to provide much more consistently accurate location. Dr Marty Feuerstein, chief technology officer at Polaris Wireless, describes the potentially life-saving and other implications to Christopher Backeberg...
In brief, as Dr Feuerstein describes it, the operators have been able to average good and bad location determinations over wide areas until now. To comply with Phase II they will have to produce only the good results over much smaller geographical areas. They won't be able to hide the bad by manipulating statistics.
The significance of this decision alone could literally mean the difference between life and death in certain situations where location can be more difficult to pin-point for emergency services - most notably in urban canyons and indoors.
Dr Feuerstein is the sort of person you want to ask for insights into location technology. As CTO of Polaris he represents the company on industry advisory committees, including the FCC's Communications, Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council's Working Group on E911 Location Accuracy.
He also leads Polaris's R&D collaborations with partners, including wireless service providers, infrastructure and location vendors and university research labs. Within Polaris he is in charge of research into new products, algorithms, system performance and air interfaces, as well as technical standards and regulatory activities.
The company, with headquarters in Santa Clara, California, and offices around the world, offers products for emergency call services (E911 Phase II), location-based services (LBS), network optimisation, autonomous monitoring and lawful interception. The Polaris Wireless Location Signatures products are based on the company's WLS Location Engine and its Autonomous Monitoring System, which includes the Predicted Signature Database (PSD).
The products are targeted principally at wireless operators, law enforcement agencies and application providers worldwide. Polaris asserts that its products have greater accuracy and reliability and lower ownership and maintenance costs than other network-based solutions in suburban and rural environments.
