Spirent Communications, a leader in testing wireless networks, services and devices, recently announced immediate availability of the first commercialized test solution for LTE assisted GPS (A-GPS) Over-The Air (OTA) Testing. This is a co-development effort by Spirent and ETS-Lindgren, two leaders in location testing.
Brock Butler, Director of Wireless Location Technology for Spirent Communications was interviewed by GISCafe Voice about this important announcement: 1) What is LTE assisted GPS and why is it important?
Long Term Evolution (LTE), often called 4G, technology is being incorporated into many next-generation consumer devices, including smartphones. It enables voice and high speed wireless data services. Nearly all consumer devices migrating to LTE also have a strong need to provide positioning capabilities. The leading technology for positioning remains Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) such as GPS (United States satellite system) or GLONASS (Russian satellite system). Assisted GNSS (e.g. A-GPS) uses an assistance server to provide satellite information to the mobile device and when coupled to a cellular technology like LTE, A-GNSS can provide improved location performance by making position fixes faster particularly at the very low power levels often associated with consumer usage in urban and indoor environments.
Esri announced today that Geoloqi, a next-generation location-based services (LBS) platform, will “merge its staff and product capabilities into Esri’s existing geospatial platform and launch a new Esri Research and Development (R&D) Center in Portland, Oregon, where Geoloqi is headquartered. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.”
Geoloqi enables rapid development of cross-platform, geography based applications utilizing a single API in any development language. Also they have good relationships with the developer community already that will complement Esri’s ArcGIS product suite to boost the companys mobile and web offerings. Additionally, Geoloqi provides algorithms designed to help preserve battery life while battery intensive location runs in the background or at prescribed intervals.
A mobile app developed for the city of Omaha, Neb. allows citizens to contribute videos and photos of potholes, fallen tree limbs, or things that pertain to zoning, and can identify or plug in location, etc.
Magellan announced its partnership with Effigis to enhance customers’ ability to collect and post-process geo-localized data. The product that will take advantage of this partnership is Magellan’s eXplorist GIS Pro 10 — a rugged, lightweight, waterproof and bluetooth-enabled handheld GPS device designed for GPS/GIS data collection.
On Monday Apple introduced a new version of its mobile operating system for iPhones and iPads that will bring a host of new features, including maps that let users soar over a three-dimensional rendering of a city, according to an article in The New York Times.
As was mentioned in this blog of a pre-announcement of Google Earth for mobile “(Pre-announcement of Google Earth for mobile made at Google event”) last week, the new map software replaces Google data with Apple’s own mapping system. This is a big step for a company that has considered Google a close partner up until now. Since Apple introduced the iPhone, it has relied on Google data to drive the mapping software. When Google released its Android platform, however, relationships between the two companies began to disintegrate. Not surprisingly as Android is the top mobile operating system in the world, putting Apple and Google head to head in several different markets.
Pre-announcement of new features for Google Maps and Google Earth for mobile platforms was made yesterday at the “New Dimension of Google Maps” event. These features aren’t available to the public yet, but possibly announced as a precursor to the Apple iOS6 event next week. It is expected that Apple will announce that Google Maps will no longer be the default mapping application on iPhones. Since Apple has been acquiring companies and building their own mapping applications, they will be offering new mapping applications that will compete with what is offered on the Android phone. This may benefit users ultimately.
Nobody really knows how effective GNSS-aided tracking is in the monitoring of criminals released early from prison, but there is a burgeoning market for this type of GPS tracking, according to a recent study sponsored by the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ). Although GNSS-aided tracking has been poo-poohed by rights activists as interfering with citizens’ civil rights, it is thought to be valuable to the whole of society to be able to track those such as high-risk sex offenders as well as parolees. In California alone, that number of parolees numbers over 100,000.
LightSquared Inc. recently had lost the approval of the Federal Communications Commission to convert airwaves originally designated for satellite service to spectrum for land-based radio towers in February. The FCC withdrew approval for the company’s network after government tests found that the signals would interfere with global-positioning systems. Now Lightsquared has filed for bankruptcy, saying it “will seek to resolve the concerns of U.S. regulators who thwarted the company’s plan to deliver high-speed wireless to as many as 260 million people.”
According to the story, LightSquared, based in Reston, Virginia, listed assets of $4.48 billion and debt of $2.29 billion as of Feb. 29 in a Chapter 11 filing today in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan. Besides its head to head battle with the FCC, Lightsquared has had financial difficulties. Creditors have requested that the company’s backer, Philip Falcone, step aside. In spite of that request, Falcone and the current management team will remain with the company, according to company spokesmen.
Bankruptcy “is intended to give LightSquared sufficient breathing room to continue working through the regulatory process that will allow us to build our 4G wireless network,” Chief Financial Officer Marc Montagner said in a statement. Reaching agreements with U.S. agencies may take as long as two years, he said in court papers.
Longview, Texas resident have a map of all the current service requests throughout their city with the CitySend Service Request System from a widget created by CitySourced. Users can hover over any pin on the map to get detailed information about a service request. Gray pins mean the requests have been closed.
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