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Wireless Networks

Notes 1.3.10 Location-based Services

Location-based services (LBS) are a general class of computer program-level services used to
include specific controls for location and time data as control features in computer programs. As
such LBS is an information service and has a number of uses in social networking today as an
entertainment service, which is accessible with mobile devices through the mobile network and
which uses information on the geographical position of the mobile device. This has become more
and more important with the expansion of the smartphone and tablet markets as well.
LBS are used in a variety of contexts, such as health, indoor object search, entertainment, work,
personal life, etc.

LBS include services to identify a location of a person or object, such as discovering the nearest
banking cash machine (a.k.a. ATM) or the whereabouts of a friend or employee. LBS include
parcel tracking and vehicle tracking services. LBS can include mobile commerce when taking
the form of coupons or advertising directed at customers based on their current location. They
include personalized weather services and even location-based games. They are an example of
telecommunication convergence.
This concept of location based systems is not compliant with the standardized concept of real-
time locating systems (RTLS) and related local services, as noted in ISO/IEC 19762-5 and ISO/
IEC 24730-1.

Self-Assessment

Fill in the blanks:
5. A voice over ............................ system offers tremendous benefits to organizations, such as
hospitals and warehouses.
6. With .......................................technology, hospitals can easily reduce the cost associated
with loss of medical equipment, such as wheel chairs, infusion pumps and computers-on-
wheels.
7. .............................enabled laptops or smartphones allow you to easily connect to the internet
no matter where you are.

8. .................................. allow employees to connect securely to their office network.

1.4 Types of Wireless Network

A wireless network joins two or more than two computers by means of communication without
using any wires. Wireless Networks utilizes spread-spectrum or OFDM depends on the
technology which is using .Wireless network enable a user to move about within a wide coverage
area and still be associated to the network. There are different types of wireless networking such
as wide area network, local area network and personal area network but the most common are
of two.

1.4.1 Wireless PANs

Wireless personal area networks (WPANs) interconnect devices within a relatively small area,
that is generally within a person’s reach. For example, both Bluetooth radio and invisible infrared
light provides a WPAN for interconnecting a headset to a laptop. ZigBee also supports WPAN
applications. Wi-Fi PANs are becoming commonplace (2010) as equipment designers start to
integrate Wi-Fi into a variety of consumer electronic devices. Intel “My WiFi” and Windows 7
“virtual Wi-Fi” capabilities have made Wi-Fi PANs simpler and easier to set up and configure

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