Dynamic Management of Real-Time Location Data on GPS-Enabled Mobile Phones

  • Authors:
  • Sean Barbeau;Miguel A. Labrador;Alfredo Perez;Philip Winters;Nevine Georggi;David Aguilar;Rafael Perez

  • Affiliations:
  • -;-;-;-;-;-;-

  • Venue:
  • UBICOMM '08 Proceedings of the 2008 The Second International Conference on Mobile Ubiquitous Computing, Systems, Services and Technologies
  • Year:
  • 2008

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Abstract

Advanced location based services have the ability to track users with Global Positioning System (GPS)-enabled cell phones in real-time. These applications share a common problem; the continuous calculation and transmission of GPS fixes from the mobile phone to a server consumes a considerable amount of energy and increases data transmission costs. Therefore, an application-level algorithm is necessary to reduce the number of GPS fixes calculated and transmitted, while continuing to track the user in real-time and record an accurate representation of his or her travel path. In this paper, two complementary algorithms are presented: the Critical Point (CP) algorithm, which filters data points to be transmitted to the server, and the location-aware state machine, which dynamically manages the frequency of the location re-calculation update rate. Both algorithms were implemented in TRAC-IT, a Java Micro Edition (Java ME) application designed to automatically collect user travel behavior; the proposed algorithms allow TRAC-IT to build an accurate representation of the user's path with a considerably reduced number of fixes while significantly extending mobile device battery life.