This book provides an excellent overview of some of the different technologies that can be used to provide positioning
solutions in support of location based services [In addition to handset location services, this book also presents systems
for people and asset tracking / mobile resource management, public and personal safety / security]. The selected systems
are covered in depth. This book will serve as good reference material for anyone interested in learning about opportunities
and pitfalls in the development and deployment of in-door positioning systems.
Alison Brown, PhD, President/CEO,
NAVSYS Corporation
This descriptive, all-encompassing book is
a must for anyone wanting to understand location-based services from infrastructure components to service deployment. The
technologies and problems associated with LBS are described at length. The approach is non-technical and the author succeeds
in explaining all concepts with hardly any formulas. The chapters are loaded with examples to illustrate past and current
attempts to develop and deploy LBS both outdoor and indoor. The broad experience of the author with LBS is apparent at every
page. In an attempt to be descriptive, the author omits to describe requirements and system specifications and performance."
Gerard Lachapelle, CRC/iCORE Chair in Wireless, Location Dept of Geomatics Engineering,
University of Calgary
When I began research about LBS several years ago, I found there was no book or
survey paper that offered a quick overview of local positioning systems. This excellent work fills solves this problem.
This book introduces several case studies, showing the details on how they are set up. Especially valuable is its detailed
coverage concerning the infrastructure of building a LBS system. The most awesome thing is that this is the first book
that clearly discusses how to deploy a LBS system. In summary, this is an excellent reference book for any researchers
and engineers interested in developing a local positioning system. Changsong Shen, Ph.D
Candidate, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of British Columbia
Local Positioning Systems is a groundbreaking book to support researchers and practitioners
in location and tracking based services. The book is particularly impressive in the coverage of emerging indoor location based
services that many observers claim to be a fast growing market (after all, we spend much of our time indoors). Congratulations
to the authors on a job well done.
Antonio S.Camara, CEO, YDreams
Specific Review for Chapter 4, Sensor Systems for Local (Indoor) Position
Computation Meant for professional managers and lay people interested in technology
and application development incorporating sensors for location and positioning. A text book for college level survey course on radio location technologies. As such it is written at the
correct level of vocabulary and content. It should appeal to those who need an overview or primer on these systems and
the advantages and disadvantages inherent in the respective approaches. I found
the chapter well organized and easy to follow. It leads the reader through a lot of material at the proper depth of
a primer. Provides sufficient depth and information for a semi-technical person to make informed decisions about the technology,
how it can be employed in a variety of applications and the merits of various methods for determining indoor location.
The material within the chapter dealing with these matters was factual, accurate and reliable. The techniques
and methods of sensing signals and determining position are cogent and appropriate.
Kudos:
-
Comprehensive. A broad swath of technology types, statistical methods and use cases is presented
and they are relevant and topical. This is excellent and makes this chapter valuable. Use cases are always appreciated
by lay audiences and they have to be relevant to problems that people, organizations or managers are trying to solve. You
have done very well in this regard. -
Good use of passive vs. active, network vs. terminal as an organizing principle. -
Good depiction of various signal processing techniques
for resolving position and location - all appropriate and all provided within context. Graphics and especially signal propagation
graphics will help the reader understand limitations and environments that will cause issues. -
Interesting work is going on in University laboratories
and you do a very good job at capturing the progress that is being made and proper attributions. Sometimes the work
in college labs are truly science projects with little hope of escaping the lab. The examples you cite actually have
some commercial promise in this domain. -
Precise positioning, location, location awareness, presence/absence are all part of the continuum. You
did a good job of informing when these attributes were significant. Use cases always make a stronger argument to the
non-technical and your examples were first rate. -
Also including non-radio technologies was valuable. Many would not consider optical systems, for
instance, as everything they read and hear about is Wi-Fi this and RFID that. -
The mapping/fingerprinting section is excellent. I'm not sure
that it will ever find much traction as a location service as it involves considerable cost to derive, validate and then periodic
checks as environments morph constantly. Where it will really pay off is to be used in highly secure environments where
changes have to be noticed - when the signature changes, something within the environment has changed.
John Dmohowski, Sr. Partner, Drake Associates (GPS Specialist)
Specific Review for Chapter 5, Location Awareness and Navigation
in Location-Based Systems Location awareness is an extraordinarily important topic and one I'm not convinced that
the public or even the professionals fully comprehend in terms of what it means - in fact it is usually presented by comparing
it to better understood concepts - position, location, etc.
I was trying to use what I know about vehicle navigation (certainly the easiest
perhaps because it is what we have the most experience with) and how it might be applied to indoor location. And then
thinking about the way we usually navigate a new building without a map or sign posts (other than the logic of the way a building
works) versus what we do in a car - when going to a new place with only vague idea of route, final destinations or pathways.
The process is entirely different on a macro scale. There is a level of logic to a way a building is laid out that doesn't
occur for streets and roadways (except where 1st street is adjacent 2nd street). Getting to indoor positions can be approached in the way
we do vehicle location but suffers from scale externalities. The transition from symbolic cues to precise locations
better provided by geometries is one example where we will use hybrid approaches. But it is the differences in planning
and routing that occur after finding your initial location (or starting point).
Good things:
-
Excellent
explanation of why transition from maps used to navigate roads and problems with finding 'maps' of buildings.
Most what intuitively believe that we would have a much better idea of how a building is laid out from architectural drawings
- it isn't lack of information but rather lack of access to the information which is critical. -
Scales and the sensors used to assess our environment are critical considerations
when moving between models. You make that clear and provide appropriate examples where relevant. Human readable
instructions don't matter for a robot obviously. But the scales issue will drive the application developments.
From macro to nano - and everything in between. -
A lot of
good examples of the current state of the art and some curious choices included as well. -
Map-matching sections and explanation of geometric is very strong.
-
Explanation of models and data is excellent and appropriate.
John Dmohowski, Sr. Partner, Drake Associates (GPS Specialist)
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