Multicast over Location-Based Services

Background

The positioning technologies in the LBS solutions are based on the various distances of the communication mobile from the different base stations. With advances in automatic position sensing and wireless connectivity, the application range of mobile LBSs is rapidly developing, particularly in the area of geographic, tourist and local travel information systems (Ibach et al., 2005). Such systems can offer maps and other area-related information. The LBS solutions give the capability to deliver location-aware content to subscribers on the basis of the positioning capability of the wireless infrastructure. The LBS solutions can push location-dependent data to mobile users according to their interest or the user can pull the required information by sending a request to a server that provides location-dependent information.

LBSs process information with respect to the location of one or several persons, also referred to as targets before presenting it to the user. In recent years, LBSs have become increasingly important and have helped accelerate the development towards ubiquitous computing environments. Traditional LBSs map targets to locations (e.g., Where is person X located?), i.e., they find the position of a specific person or group of people. This type of LBS is denoted as Tracking Services.