Location Based Services can be considered as the most rapidly expanding field of the mobile communications sector. The proliferation of the mobile/wireless Internet, the constantly increasing use of handheld, mobile devices and position tracking technologies and the emergence of mobile computing, prepared the grounds for the introduction of this new type of services with impressively large application domain and use range. Prompted by the avalanche of technology advances in the aforementioned areas in this paper we present a generic platform for delivering Location Based Services (LBS). The platform features a modular architecture, which can be easily extended with additional functionality. The paper focuses on the technical specifications, the design and the prototype implementation of the platform's Kernel, which is responsible for coordinating communication with various pluggable components in order to provide the full range of operations involved in the LBS delivery chain (i.e., from initial deployment to invocation, execution and delivery of results). Issues such as scalability, efficiency, openness, portability and security are also considered in the design of the platform.
Location Based Services can be considered as one of the most rapidly expanding fields of the mobile communications sector, with an impressively large application range. The proliferation of mobile/wireless Internet and mobile computing, and the constantly increasing use of handheld, mobile devices and position tracking technologies prepared the grounds for the introduction of this new type of services. The combination of position fixing mechanisms with location-dependent, geographical information, can offer truly customized personal communication services through the mobile phone or other type of devices. Prompted by the avalanche of technology advances in the aforementioned areas in this paper we present an integrated platform for delivering Location Based Services (LBS). The platform covers the full life cycle of a LBS starting from the specification of the service, covering issues like the deployment and maintenance of services, the service invocation and the final delivery of the produced results to the invoking user. A prototype implementation of the discussed platform was developed and used to perform a series of trial services, with the purpose of demonstrating the pursued functionality.
Location Based Services can be considered as the most rapidly expanding field of the mobile communications sector. The proliferation of the mobile/wireless Internet, the constantly increasing use of handheld, mobile devices and positioning technologies and the emergence of mobile computing, prepared the grounds for the introduction of this new type of services with impressively large application domain and use range. The combination of position fixing mechanisms with location-dependent, geographical information, can offer truly customized personal communication services through the mobile phone or other type of devices. Web Services have emerged as a set of open standards and gained a lot of momentum during the recent past. Many software vendors are announcing Web Service initiatives and adoption in their products. Many organizations are involved in the refinement of Web Service standards. Moreover, XML has become the de facto standard for data interchange on the Web and its emergence is having an enormous impact on Web development. Motivated by the technology advances in the aforementioned areas in this paper we discuss the exploitation of Web Services and XML to build a generic platform for delivering Location Based Services (LBS) to the nomadic user.
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