On the Evaluation of Proactive Location-Based Services | IEEE Conference Publication | IEEE Xplore

On the Evaluation of Proactive Location-Based Services


Abstract:

During the last years, location-based services (LBS) became one of the most popular features of mobile devices like smartphones or tablets. Basically, reactive LBS provid...Show More

Abstract:

During the last years, location-based services (LBS) became one of the most popular features of mobile devices like smartphones or tablets. Basically, reactive LBS provide means to access location-specific content upon request by the user, whereas their proactive counterparts are used to push location-specific content to the user as soon as a dedicated zone - called geofence - is entered or left. The fields of application for proactive LBS are manifold, ranging from location-based reminding over location-based citizen participation to location-based marketing. However, evaluating and comparing proactive LBS regarding their performance and scalability are still cumbersome tasks, involving resource-intensive field trials and in-depth investigations of their underlying architectures. This paper identifies domain- and architecture-independent attributes of proactive LBS that are well-suited to characterize a proactive LBS regarding these non-functional properties. It also takes a deeper look into the key parameters which are mainly affecting the performance and scalability in the real world. While putting the focus on these key parameters and attributes, it is proposed to simulate a proactive LBS within an in-lab environment prior to its evaluation in the wild. For this purpose, a prototypical in-lab evaluation framework for proactive LBS is introduced which generates simulation-based reports regarding the functionality, performance and scalability of a proactive LBS in general.
Date of Conference: 01-05 July 2015
Date Added to IEEE Xplore: 24 September 2015
ISBN Information:
Electronic ISSN: 0730-3157
Conference Location: Taichung, Taiwan

I. Introduction

With the rise of smartphones and tablets in the recent years, the daily use of location-based services (LBS) became a matter of course. Every day, mobile applications installed on billions of mobile devices interact with reactive LBS in order to support the users in their daily life through the provision of location-specific content. All the popular mobile applications for point of interest search, travel guidance or weather forecasts - to mention just a few - are based on this principle to make the required information available upon request by the user. In contrast, proactive LBS [1] are built upon the idea to proactively support the user with location-specific content. While better known as Geofencing, a proactive LBS constantly monitors the position of each mobile device and triggers a content update every time the user enters or leaves a dedicated zone, called geofence. Proactive LBS became popular in the context of location-based marketing [2]–[5]. Thereby, potential customers are notified about location-based coupons or ads while entering a commercial district, mall or retail store. Furthermore, location-based reminders [6], [7] - nowadays mostly integrated in calendar or notes applications - became a core feature of mobile operating systems. Other potential application fields are the location-based automation [8], urban planning [9], fleet management [10], car-to-x systems [11], in-car-infotainment systems [12], parking [13] or delivery services [14].

Contact IEEE to Subscribe

References

References is not available for this document.