Detecting identifiable areas in mobile environments

Abstract

Location-based applications and services are getting increasingly important for mobile users. They take into account a mobile user's current location and provide a location-dependent output. To support developers of location-based services, the Nimbus framework hides specific details of positioning systems and provides uniform output containing physical as well as symbolic location information, which often are more suitable for applications and users. One basic problem solved by Nimbus is the Distributed Location Resolution Problem: given a location; which identifiable areas cover this location, if the area information is distributed among different servers. This paper presents a solution of this problem that runs in the distributed, self-organizing Nimbus infrastructure. The effectiveness is demonstrated with the help of performance analyses.