Power-efficient Positioning Technologies for Mobile Devices

In recent years, mobile devices such as mobile phones, smartphones and hand-helds are becoming more and more prevalent. With the emergence of smartphones, the availability of advanced localization technologies, like the global positioning system (GPS), increased significantly. This in turn enables the widespread and often continuous use of location based services to deliver tailored information to users. The utilization of GPS, however, bears the downside of high energy consumption that will drain a mobile device’s battery quite fast. Numerous approaches to improve the energy efficiency of localization have been proposed in the recent past. In this work, an overview of current localization technologies is given. Furthermore a classification of techniques for improving the energy efficiency is presented and elaborated by evaluating some of the most promising approaches in the corresponding fields.