LORE: An infrastructure to support location-aware services

Abstract

Internet and mobile computing, location-based services (LBS)-the capability to deliver location-aware content to subscribers on the basis of the positioning capability of the wireless infrastructure-are emerging as key value-added services that telecom operators can offer. To support efficient and effective development and deployment of innovative location-aware applications, a flexible and resilient middleware should be built as the enabling infrastructure. This paper presents the research and efforts made in the IBM China Research Laboratory toward developing an infrastructure that supports location-aware services. This infrastructure is based on a proposed location operating reference model (LORE), which addresses many major aspects of building location-aware services, including positioning, location modeling, location-dependent query processing, tracking, and intelligent location-aware message notification. Three key components of the infrastructure-the location server, a moving object database, and a spatial publish/subscribe engine-are introduced in detail. The location server has a common location adapter framework that supports heterogeneous positioning techniques and industrystandard location application program interfaces (APIs). The moving object database manages the location stream and processes the location-based queries. The spatial publish/subscribe engine enables intelligent location-aware message notification. We also present some location-aware application demonstrations that leverage the LORE infrastructure. Part of our work has been tested in pilot projects with leading carriers in China and has been integrated into the IBM WebSphere Everyplace Suite.

Location-dependent query processing

“…openmobilealliance.org/tech/affiliates/lif/lifindex.html), supported by the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) (http://www.openmobilealliance.org), which defines a set of rules for querying and representing location information managed by Location Servers 3 . Moreover, some researchers also propose mechanisms for creating an infrastructure of location servers providing a common location model; e.g., [Myllymaki and Edlund 2002;Jiang and Steenkiste 2002;Roth 2003a;Graumann et al 2003;Chen et al 2004;Lehmann et al 2004;Ranganathan et al 2004]. …”

“…Along the same lines, there are some works, such as [Burcea and Jacobsen 2003;Eugster et al 2003;Chen et al 2004;Zeidler 2004], that propose the use of the publish/subscribe paradigm as an information dissemination model for location-based services. Finally, index structures that are appropriate for broadcasting are being investigated (e.g., [Waluyo et al 2005;Zheng et al 2006]).…”

PerPos: A Translucent Positioning Middleware Supporting Adaptation of Internal Positioning Processes

“…The primary purpose of MiddleWhere is to provide location information to applications in a technology agnostic way. The Location Operating REference model (LORE) [22] focuses on providing high-level location data together with sensor fusion and intelligent notification. Cascadia by Welbourne et al [23] is a middleware for detecting location events from RFID-based events.…”

The PoSIM middleware for translucent and context-aware integrated management of heterogeneous positioning systems

“…Similarly, the Framework for Location Aware ModElling (FLAME) is a transparent integration middleware: it bases its positioning abstractions on a multi-step architecture for location data fusion, generation of geometric relationships, and eventbased location data disclosure [11]. Finally, the Location Operating REference model (LORE) originally proposes different abstracting steps to provide highlevel location data, independently from low-level details: positioning, modeling, fusion, query tracking, and intelligent notification [12]; in addition, it ensures privacy and security management, by controlling information disclosure, similarly to Alipes. Positioning system integration in LORE is achieved by the Common Adapter Framework that provides a standard API to fetch location information.…”