Position technologies for internet connected mobile terminals, offering location based audio services

Abstract

The company Infotain wishes to offer location based audio guiding at museums. They wish that this audio is going to be available through the visitor’s mobile phone. However, to be able to offer location based audio guiding a suitable positioning technology for mobile phones has to be found. Therefore the purpose of this thesis is to gather information about the technologies that can be used for location based information. After the technologies have been thoroughly examined we have to give Infotain a recommendation about what technology seems to best satisfy the demands. Important factors in evaluating the technologies are accuracy, response time, infrastructure power needs, and the ability to relocate site infrastructure. The seven technologies we found suitable are GPS, Mobile positioning, A-GPS, WLAN, Bluetooth, NFC and 2D barcodes. The two technologies NFC and 2D Barcodes were found the most promising as they satisfied the requirements to a high degree. Therefore these two were included in the testing phase. The testing was designed to simulate the situations a user of the guiding service could experience. Key factors recorded during the testing were time used and number of key strokes used. These results assisted in the choosing of a technology as they give a good picture of how the different technologies function. Based on its independence from electricity, its high accuracy, low response time and ease of site relocation, QR Codes was recommended as the most suitable technology.