Towards a general location service for mobile environments

Abstract

With the advent of mobile computing devices and cheap location sensing systems, location information has become an important resource both for mobile and 'desktop' users. We describe some key concepts a scalable ubiquitous location service should be based on. Firstly, we discuss the general problem of client-server computing in mobile environments. Secondly, we describe the theoretical and design framework for a general location service. We address the use of multiple sources of location information. Further, we describe location domains as a powerful framework for presenting and protecting location information.