By Nader Baghdadi
Location-based Wi-Fi services can add real and immediate value to existing enterprise and carrier Wi-Fi deployments writes Nader Baghdadi – Regional Director, Middle East, Ruckus Wireless
Knowing where someone is, is important. If you know where someone is, you are in a better position to do something for or with them. This is the basic concept behind location-based Wi-Fi services (so-called LBS).
Indoor location technologies have received a lot of attention in the mobile world recently, with Apple’s acquisition of WiFiSLAM, Google’s increasing support for indoor locations in Google Maps, and Microsoft’s expansion of indoor maps in Bing.
By knowing where clients are, companies are able to help them get wherever they need to go, make the network experience better for them, use data from their location to optimize their experience, offer and tell them stuff along the way, and tell them stuff along the way. As Smart Wi-Fi solves the capacity, reliability, and performance problems on Wi-Fi infrastructures, enterprises and carriers have become keenly interested in offering LBS services to their customers and their’ clients.
Different Approaches to Using Wi-Fi to Determine Location
Think of Wi-Fi location as indoor GPS. Wi-Fi-based positioning systems are used where GPS is inadequate, due to various causes including multipath and signal blockage indoors. Though the Wi-Fi protocol fundamentals haven’t changed much in the past few years, the ecology of Wi-Fi location services have completely flipped.
Now that almost every human on the planet has multiple Wi-Fi-enabled devices—in pocket, on hip, in hand, on desk—businesses from retail and hospitality to healthcare and education are looking to capitalize. With that shift, new techniques to improve accuracy are emerging, user behavior and expectations are changing, and new location service models are being built.
Wi-Fi supports a number of different location approaches today, but signal strength localization based on signal strength (using multiple received signal measurements to calculate the source’s location) and RF fingerprinting (collecting on-site RF data to map signal measurements to locations) have been the most common. Most of the focus on location was initially placed on asset tracking or locating clients and rogue APs.
Some techniques to determine client location include RTLS, mobile applications, Wi-Fi signal-based localization and RF Fingerprinting, and time difference of Arrival (TDOA)
Crunching Location Data Improves Reliability
With mobile devices as the catalyst, a more user- and consumer-centric approach to location is taking form, where businesses seek to benefit indirectly by adding value to their customers, guests, or end-users. The breadth of appeal for mobile and the increasing use of Wi-Fi also enable businesses to justify the cost of application development (and the Wi-Fi network itself), because suddenly Wi-Fi is tied to revenue instead of expenses.
Borrowing a theme from the mobile ecosystem, location platforms are creating easy-to-use APIs and SDKs, simplifying the integration and customization issues. Instead of building a generic application tailored for some specific customers, location vendors build the location tools and then allow the customer to build their unique application.
Beyond the Infrastructure: Data is King
It’s important to note that the biggest single benefit of LBS services is gathering data and analytics from users that can be used by organizations to improve the user experience and customer service. Almost always, when you hear pundits talk about location services, they cite the usefulness of location to push people advertisements and coupons. This is interesting and useful but users find it bothersome at best.
Naturally, a lot of focus has been on retail, where location and analytics are wed. As we’re already seeing, many solutions focus on higher-level analytics with rough RSSI data to evaluate customer traffic trends, capture rates, return rates, and similar. But with more information, retail centers can optimize stores based on typical customer traffic paths, or venue owners can charge more for premium storefront or high-view ad spots.
But look at verticals such as hospitality. They have elements of retail (bar, restaurant, spa/massage services). Then they have navigation challenges (where is the conference room, bar, my child, pool, fitness area, etc.), where a site mapping/navigation app could be helpful.
Then there’s the huge premium on customer service, where location services could be tied to customer service systems—personalized greetings for loyalty members, quicker in-app check-in on arrival, and you can dream up any number of ways to pamper guests with location-specific customer service enhancements.
And the wheels are spinning in other industries, like transportation, manufacturing, healthcare, stadiums, and other venues. Expect Wi-Fi to provide much more than Internet access; as the trend matures, users will begin looking for site/venue-specific apps on arrival.
Beyond the enterprise, carriers have an even stronger interest in offering location services and analytics – not only to better tune their network but to also help monetize them.
Smarter Wi-Fi services that add granular location details of users leveraging basic network information allow carriers and their customer to deliver much a higher quality experience to end users.
If it’s not already, put this topic on your radar. Location may be the next place to be.