A Survey and Taxonomy of Location Systems for Ubiquitous Computing

“A Survey and Taxonomy of Location Systems for Ubiquitous Computing“, Jeffrey Hightower and Gaetano Borriello, Extended paper from Computer, 34(8), August 2001, pp.57-66.

The authors present the basic techniques used for location sensing, taxonomized location system properties (physical position vs symbolic location, absolute vs relative, location computation, accuracy, precision, scale, recognition, cost, and limitations), and surveyed research and commercial location systems that define the field. They highlight location-sensing-system accuracy as a challenge and the necessity to integrate an error factor:

We therefore suggest that future quantitative evaluations of location-sensir systems include the error distribution, summarizing the system’s accuracy and precision and any relevant dependences such as the density of infrastructural elements. (…) We strongly encourage the location-sensir research and development community to investigate how best obtain and represent such error distribution.

Accuracy and precision are defined as follow in location positioning:

The distances denote the accuracy, or grain size of the positioning information. The percentage denote the precision or how often we can expect to get the accuracy. For example reaching 1-to-3 meter accuracies 99 percent of the time.

Relation to my thesis: The limitations are defined as location system properties.

References:
Markus Bylund and Fredrik Espinoza. Using quake III arena to simulate sensors and actuators when evaluating and testing mobile services. In CHI 2001 Extended Abstracts, pages 241–242. ACM, March-April 2001. Short Talk.