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Providing Location Based Information/Advertising for Existing

Mobile Phone Users

Omer Rashid, Paul Coulton, Reuben Edwards, Pers Ubiquit Comput (2008)

Advisor: Chia-Hui ChangStudent: Kuan-Hua Huo

Date: 2010-7-27

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Outline

1. Introduction2. Bluetooth location based system3. System implementations4. Application design5. Conclusions

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Instruction

• Mobile commerce (m-commerce)– A set of business activities conducted over mobile

and wireless networks using applications on handheld devices.

• Mobile phones and provide features such as– high mobility– personalisation (through location, proximity,

contextualisation, or feature evolution)– large user demographic

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Instruction cont.

• Providing location information for the services– requiring significant change in the software and

hardware and/or the handset• Location information is essentially a two-stage

process– provide geographical position of the mobile user – provide the information on a particular product or

service related to that location

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Instruction cont.

• The problem of locating the geographical position of the mobile phone users– all mobile phone systems effectively track a user’s

whereabouts at the cellular level– Each cell site has a unique Cell-ID– This Cell-ID can be used as a filter for localised

information although the accuracy is relatively crude, between 100 m and 12 km

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Instruction cont.

• The framework which enable higher degrees of accuracy, between 1 and 50 m, could be elements such as– the locations of the base stations of a mobile

phone network– satellites of the global positioning system (GPS)– enhanced observed time difference (EOTD)

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Instruction cont.

• These measured solutions achieve high degrees of positional accuracy.

• The disadvantage– The calculations can be performed at • the handset • In the infrastructure

– requiring the system software to be upgraded to facilitate this process

– they suffer inaccuracies

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Instruction cont.

• They suffer inaccuracies when the line of site between the mobile user and the infrastructure is obscured.

• GPS based systems – in urban environments – buildings can obscure a direct view of three

satellites – preventing measurements being made – creating the so-called ‘urban canyon’ effect.

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Instruction cont.

• An alternative approach is to ascertain location from the user’s interaction with objects of known location.

• The interaction could be proximity within a physical area using communication technologies such as– WiFi, Bluetooth, or two dimensional (2D) bar

codes (QR codes, radio frequency identification (RFID) tags)

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Instruction cont.

• 2D barcodes and RFID– The advantage is that they can be passive solutions

in that they do not require a power source in the object itself.

– use a phone with an on-board camera– through interaction with an online database whilst

the RFID systems– Another advantage is that they avoid measurement

problems and thus can readily be deployed in indoor and urban environments.

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Instruction cont.

• The second part of the location process is the spatial information– represent data may be as a symbol on a map– more sophisticated services will need to interpret

the raw positional data and proximity to other mobile users

– a number of data formats and standards have emerged such as spatial data bases supported by positional forms of XML

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Instruction cont.

• We present an implied location advertising solution using Bluetooth.

• The system – provides location based

information/advertisements – at an accuracy of around 10 m – requires no software to be installed on the phone – allows users to instantaneously ‘opt-in’ to the

service.

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Bluetooth location based system

• The obvious choice is Bluetooth which is in fact increasing its growth.

• Nokia is predicting a year-on year increase of 65% in 2006.

• Bluetooth is currently present in 65% of all mobile phone handsets.

• Bluetooth is a very practical and worthwhile scenario.

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Bluetooth location based system cont.

• Bluetooth is used as a means of targeting users with specialized content in a specific area at a given time.

• Figure 1 shows the basic layout of a system for transmitting messages to all the devices in a given area.

Fig. 1 Basic Bluetooth message system

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System implementations

• We will present two particular use case scenarios: 1. Supermarket adverts/coupons2. Guide system

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Supermarket adverts/coupons

• A system is implemented in a supermarket to supply customers with the latest information on products or highlight particular special offers.

• We will require a number of message centers scattered throughout the store

• Customers tend to browse the environment rather than find the optimal route.

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Supermarket adverts/coupons cont.

• One of the major concerns is how to ensure that the same message is never sent twice to one device.

• To facilitate the fact that devices will roam between different locations, and to prevent duplicate messages, an integrated backend information system is required.

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Supermarket adverts/coupons cont.

• Figure 2 shows the layout for two sites, each of them pushing messages (adverts/coupons) to the potential customers. Fig. 2 Roaming device between

different Bluetooth sites

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Supermarket adverts/coupons cont.

• The messages can be tagged to expire in the database after a certain amount of time.

• To improve and better target potential customers, the information system can be altered to remember the devices that take advantage of the coupon.

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Guide system

• A system is implemented at a tourist attraction providing users with key information about the location.

• They will be sending out different messages depending upon their location within a particular tourist spot.

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Guide system cont.

• The message could be– Information about the current location.– Information about other points of interest in the

same location.– This particular tourist spot will close in certain

amount of time.– other tourist attractions in the vicinity

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Guide system cont.

• For example, the system implemented at the historic site of Lancaster Castle.– entry to the castle • receive a brief history of the castle• its current use as a working gaol and court

– gets within the range of another Bluetooth site• located near the castle courtyard• another message giving details of the site were the

Pendle witches were hung on 16 November 1812

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Guide system cont.

• Different Bluetooth sites within the castle provide different messages to the user.

• The information system will keep track of the devices discovered by each site and the messages sent to them.

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Application design

• Figure 3 illustrates the different processes involved, within the entire system, to discover and send messages to users.

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Application design cont.

• The specific details of the system operation are shown in Fig. 4

Fig. 4 Message sites Interacting with database

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Application design cont.

• This example is of a message received on a Bluetooth enabled handset as part of an information system implemented in the Informatics Group of Infolab21 at Lancaster University, UK.

Fig. 5 Bluetooth news alert at InfoLab21

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Conclusions

• According to Barwise and Strong, in SMS m-advertising, 81% of the test subjects viewed all the messages before deleting them and 77% of them did that as soon as they received the advertisement.

• users are more likely to take advantage of the offers that could accompany the advertisements further increasing the likelihood of use.

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Conclusions cont.

• the system presented in this paper allows users to choose whether they want to receive information or not – turning on or off their Bluetooth reception

• One of the great benefits of this system is – it can be deployed without requiring the users

to do anything more complicated than switch on their Bluetooth capability and accept the message.