An Architecture for Delivering Location-Based Services

Location-based services (LBS) denote services provided to mobile users according to their geographic location. Such services are emerging as value-added services, and their implementation requires a secure and reliable wireless architecture. This paper identifies technical challenges related to LBS technologies, and presents a cost-effective wireless network architecture which can efficiently support LBS applications. Such an infrastructure contains a geolocation server which uses a geolocation database for gathering information required to compute user location, and transmits information to be displayed on the mobile terminals. Several scenarios related to emergency services, context-aware services, navigation and proximity services demonstrate the feasibility of this proposal, and show that the proposed architecture can rapidly provide locationdependent information access in a changing environment.