Category:Wireless locating

Wireless locating is a category of technologies to determine the actual location of an entity by means of wireless transmission. The wireless locating concept arises from location awareness, some generalized demand for definitive knowledge about the actual location of objects and persons.

This category includes articles on different types of real-time locating systems (RTLS) and many other locating concepts in the context of ubiquitous computing.

Several groups of approaches are currently manifest in products for local purposes in relative coordinates or in site-wise defined systems of coordinates:

• Choke point indexing, as with RFID tags or OFID labels
• Fuzzy locating, as with Wireless LAN or Bluetooth
• Real-time locating, as with multilateration or unilateration

Some systems support regionally limited purposes in absolute coordinates:

• Mobile phone tracking as generic cell phone locating
• GSM localization as cell phone locating according to GSM standards
• Location^{[clarification needed]}

Specialised service approaches just offer locating in symbolic coordinates, as e.g. with IP addresses:

• Location Based Services (LBS) as a generic term with mobile phone networks
• Whois Internet Domain information & Geolocation
• E911 emergency telephone directory services
• PSAP emergency telephone directory services
• 4-1-1 reverse telephone directory services in USA and Canada
• Reverse telephone directory reverse telephone directory services in British Commonwealth countries
• Cell site tracking

The other systems designs apply for global purposes in global coordinates as e.g. WGS84:

• RADAR detection
• Radio navigation at low frequencies as with LORAN or DECCA
• Satellite navigation or locating, as with GPS, GLONASS or Galileo, including the most common
• GPS tracking
• Differential GPS
• WAAS
• MSAS
• EGNOS

Nowadays outdated systems approaches for global locating are:

• LORAN
• Decca Navigator System
• CHAYKA

Compare: Inertial technologies do not use wires nor radio, thus inertial measurement is not a wireless technology, but is mostly used in conjunction with such.