In this category exists different techniques which I’ll not describe, except one of the most used, which is called “fingerprinting”: it records in a database the signal strength from the nearby access points along with the known coordinates of the device. It takes advantage of the growing number of access points in dense urban areas and is particularly efficient indoors. Wi-Fi-based positionning is one of the most efficient and has greatly developed in the past few years. Usually there is two main methods that can be used to geolocate a device when the GPS is not available :

There is ongoing experiments in 4 cities, including Paris with tests being held in the 4 tunnels of the A14.īut that is a very specific answer to a “small” problem, because we can lose GPS signal almost everywhere, particularly indoor s or in rural areas. Being open source, the technology will be incorporated by GPS providers and delivered to all users, Waze drivers or not. This is a relatively affordable program, as it is recommended to install 42 beacons (at $28.5 each) per mile so $1200 per mile. Waze Beacon – What it looks like ( Source) There is only one limit to that: the need of a Bluetooth-enabled smartphone, but that’s not a big problem because this feature is widely spread nowaday.

The strategy is to partner with the later to install the famous beacons on tunnel walls: they are small devices that replace the GPS signal with Bluetooth to provide the location information. This time the society doesn’t rely on it’s engaged community but try to broaden it with tunnels operators. It’s to address this problem that Waze has intervened by developing a new geolocation technology independent from GPS : the Waze Beacons. This dependence is especially noticeable when we cannot have access to it : a good example is when we lose the signal in tunnels. With the decline use of paper maps we gradually became dependent to those technologies, the first one being the GPS.

Today, whether you want to know where you are or where you want to go, it always imply location technology. Billet publié le 1 décembre 2016 par Pierre Vivet

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