Polaris Wireless trials said to result in improved location accuracy

Mobile Europe
December 4th, 2009

Polaris Wireless, a global specialist in high accuracy, software-based location solutions, today announced its Polaris Wireless Location Signatures (Polaris WLSTM) Hybrid technology has established new benchmarks in location performance, including better accuracy, reduced time to fix and improved battery consumption, for indoor and dense urban environments, according to field trials conducted by major wireless carriers globally.

The trials, performed in multiple continents, are claimed to demonstrate that Polaris's Hybrid solution performs better than A-GPS alone in both indoor and complex environments, such as dense urban areas with high rise buildings and many signal obstructions.  In addition, Polaris Wireless announced that its solution is 4G LTE ready with the Hybrid solution supporting multiple cellular air interfaces (2G/3G/4G) in a single platform in support of carrier's multi-mode services and devices.

"The ability to locate wireless handsets and devices in indoor environments is particularly important since that is where most users originate voice and data calls," said Professor Per K. Enge, a leading researcher at Stanford University's GPS Laboratory. "Location performance in places like high rise office buildings and indoor shopping malls is critical to meeting consumer and enterprise demand as well as emergency call requirements. Further, with the established trend of mobile wireless replacing landline services, the importance of accurate, timely and efficient location indoors will continue to rapidly grow."

"The advantage of the Polaris Wireless solution is that it works well in non line-of-sight, cluttered environments - with indoors being a particularly challenging environment for cellular location systems," said Dr. Marty Feuerstein, CTO of Polaris Wireless. "WLS capitalizes on complex obstructions and shadowing to improve location performance. In addition, the Polaris Wireless Hybrid location solution for 4G LTE networks enables truly global and ubiquitous location-aware applications that offer consumers far more than today's turn-by-turn navigation."

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