Intel is investing in Wi-Fi positioning system Skyhook wireless, reports Telephony Magazine. Intel is joining the company’s first $6.5 million funding round adding to the $1.8 million seed funding the company received in 2003. Skyhook’s Wi-Fi Positioning System (WPS) is an indoor-outdoor positioning system that utilizes Wi-Fi rather than GPS or cell towers to accurately pinpoint location.
Skyhook Wireless uses the broadcasted media access controller (MAC) addresses of every Wi-Fi access point it can find. Instead of relying on cellular triangulation or GPS, Skyhook has created a nationwide map of Wi-Fi access points, which it compiles into a database on top of which location-based services can be built.
By pinpointing these locations on a map, Skyhook uses two or more Wi-Fi access points and the relative strength of their signals to extrapolate a devices location within 20-40 meters.
The management system is even self-healing. If someone moves an access point or shuts it off, the network can detect the change by comparing it to the signals of other nearby transceivers, updating the database on the fly. Skyhook has mapped out the Wi-Fi footprints of 70 cities in the U.S. so far.
Competitor Navizon hard-launched today after three months of testing with a network of 5,000 users. Navizon’s software is currently compatible with Windows mobile devices and cell phones using the Symbian operating system, and is free for non-commercial use.
“It’s like a software-only virtual GPS,” says the developer. “It’s also a little similar to peer-to-peer file sharing. One person buys a GPS [device], maps his city and creates a virtual GPS. Then everybody else can benefit from it.”
Wi-fi Planet explains how it works.
You load the software on a Pocket PC with built-in GPS and, ideally, both Wi-Fi and cellular phone functionality. Then, as Houri says, “you just live your normal life.”
As you walk around your city, the device receives broadcast signals from Wi-Fi access points – hotspots, home Wi-Fi networks, company WLANs (much like the competitive service built by Skyhook Wireless), but Navizon adds cell towers to the mix. The Navizon software takes signal strength measurements from the built-in Wi-Fi and/or cellular radios – at three different locations for each AP or tower detected. Since Navizon knows its own location from the Pocket PC’s GPS, the readings of signal strength are enough, using sophisticated algorithms, to triangulate the position of each AP or tower. The software then records those locations. The Navizon software does all of this automatically.
Once the software has built a database of local AP and tower locations, it can accurately calculate its position by triangulating from three or more of them – again by measuring signal strength and applying proprietary algorithms. It works even when GPS doesn’t, including inside.
Navizon complements and increases the accuracy of GPS in built-up areas where coverage is otherwise often poor. Navizon makes available the database of AP and tower locations built by GPS-equipped users – free – to users who don’t have GPS.
Asset and people tracking over Wi-Fi is also growing.
The Ekahau RTLS is a mission-critical location tracking solution that easily integrates with Wi-Fi networks that are already in use in many large public and private facilities, such as Nagoya Ekisaikai Hospital in Japan. The Ekahau RTLS gives hospital staff the real-time information. Ekahau and IBS Japan Co., an Ekahau-certified value added reseller and systems integrator in Japan, installed the Ekahau RTLS with T201 Wi-Fi tags at Nagoya Ekisaikai Hospital to support its emergency management operations.
Ekahau leverages standard Wi-Fi access points, so no proprietary infrastructure is needed.
GIOVE-A is the first (test) satellite of the Galileo project, due to launch next week. The multi-billion satellite navigation system is co-ordinated by the European Union (EU) and the European Space Agency (ESA). The Galileo constellation will comprise 30 satellites in 3 orbits to provide position accuracy of 1 metre or less. Galileo will operate globally in competition and conjunction with the U.S. run Global Positioning System (GPS) and Russia’s Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS).
Today’s GPS satellites seem likely to be piggybacking a variety of sensor packages their operators may not always talk about publicly. The GPS IIR-14 satellite, the most technologically advanced GPS satellite ever developed, was declared operational last week.
“If the Americans want to scramble GPS, they can do it whenever they want,” European Space Agency spokesman Franco Bonacina said. “Whereas our system is a civilian-based system run by a civilian authority and would be completely autonomous.”
Directions Magazine has a series of articles on mobile location-based services and content. Other magazines include Geospatial-Online, Geo World, GPS World and Wireless DevNet.
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