Assessment of Mobile Location Technology – Update Final Report July 2012 Ofcom Assessment of Mobile Location Technology – Update 304664 TNC TCS 02 A 6 July 2012 Final Report July 2012 Ofcom Riverside House, 2a Southwark Bridge Road, London, SE1 9HA Mott MacDonald, 10 Fleet Place, London EC4M 7RB, United Kingdom T +44 (0)20 7651 0300 F +44 (0)20 7651 0310, W www.mottmac.com Assessment of Mobile Location Technology – Update Issue and revision record Revision Date Originator Checker Approver Description A 6 July 2012 Phil Skeffington Richard Hewlett Richard Hewlett Final edits / changes Sarah Vant Simon Bowyer Alan Whitelaw This document is issued for the party which commissioned it We accept no responsibility for the consequences of this and for specific purposes connected with the above-captioned document being relied upon by any other party, or being used project only. It should not be relied upon by any other party or for any other purpose, or containing any error or omission used for any other purpose. which is due to an error or omission in data supplied to us by other parties This document contains confidential information and proprietary intellectual property. It should not be shown to other parties without consent from us and from the party which commissioned it. Mott MacDonald, 10 Fleet Place, London EC4M 7RB, United Kingdom T +44 (0)20 7651 0300 F +44 (0)20 7651 0310, W www.mottmac.com Assessment of Mobile Location Technology – Update Content Chapter Title Page Executive Summary i 1. Introduction 1 1.1 Background and rationale _____________________________________________________________ 1 1.2 Requirements ______________________________________________________________________ 1 1.3 Scope ____________________________________________________________________________ 2 1.4 Structure __________________________________________________________________________ 3 2. Overview and options 5 2.1 Elements of emergency location _______________________________________________________ 5 2.2 Location assessment criteria __________________________________________________________ 7 2.3 Scenarios _________________________________________________________________________ 7 2.4 Scenario 1: Handset position and SMS communication ______________________________________ 8 2.5 Scenario 2: Combined position and network communication _________________________________ 12 2.6 Scenario 3: Combined approach with legacy handset provision ______________________________ 13 2.7 Comparison of Options ______________________________________________________________ 15 3. Positioning technologies 17 3.1 GNSS Satellite Positioning ___________________________________________________________ 17 3.2 Mobile Network Cell ID ______________________________________________________________ 22 3.3 Mobile Network Enhanced Cell ID _____________________________________________________ 23 3.4 Observed Time Difference of Arrival ___________________________________________________ 25 3.5 RF Pattern Matching________________________________________________________________ 27 3.6 WiFi access point location ___________________________________________________________ 28 3.7 Bluetooth Wireless Beacons __________________________________________________________ 31 3.8 Femtocell network location ___________________________________________________________ 32 3.9 Visual pattern matching _____________________________________________________________ 32 3.10 Hybridisation methods ______________________________________________________________ 33 3.11 Performance Assessment ___________________________________________________________ 34 4. User equipment technologies 39 4.1 Enabling technologies ______________________________________________________________ 39 4.2 Handset GNSS implementation _______________________________________________________ 39 4.3 Market takeup analysis ______________________________________________________________ 46 5. Network technologies 49 5.1 Control and User Plane approaches____________________________________________________ 50 5.2 LTE and emergency calls ____________________________________________________________ 51 5.3 LTE network and location services _____________________________________________________ 51 5.4 Architectures for location information through the LTE network _______________________________ 54 5.5 New protocols for LBS in LTE ________________________________________________________ 56 304664/TNC/TCS/02/A 6 July 2012 Assessment of Mobile Location Technology – Update 5.6 QoS and its potential impact on emergency services location information _______________________ 58 5.7 Vendor support for LTE positioning ____________________________________________________ 61 5.8 Emerging approaches ______________________________________________________________ 64 5.9 Impact of technical architectures on potential organisational structures _________________________ 70 6. Industry context 72 6.1 Overall industry value chain __________________________________________________________ 72 6.2 LBS industry developments __________________________________________________________ 74 6.3 LTE rollout _______________________________________________________________________ 74 6.4 Organisations involved in various LBS __________________________________________________ 75 6.5 Commercial LBS Organisational Models ________________________________________________ 81 6.6 Potential Emergency Services Organisational Models ______________________________________ 83 7. Emergency service technologies 88 7.1 Background ______________________________________________________________________ 88 7.2 PSAP ___________________________________________________________________________ 89 7.3 Call Handling Agents _______________________________________________________________ 95 8. Regulation and standards 102 8.1 EU developments _________________________________________________________________ 102 8.2 US FCC developments _____________________________________________________________ 108 Appendices 111 Appendix A. Glossary ________________________________________________________________________ 112 304664/TNC/TCS/02/A 6 July 2012 Assessment of Mobile Location Technology – Update Executive Summary Mott MacDonald has conducted an updated review of mobile location technology options for emergency calls on behalf of Ofcom. It considers changes since an earlier report produced for Ofcom by Mott MacDonald in April 2010. An increasing proportion of calls to the emergency services are received from mobile devices. Mobiles are often used indoors in preference to fixed lines, but unlike fixed lines there is no consistent means of locating them. VoIP from fixed or mobile devices is an important related topic, though not a focus for this report. Since our previous report was issued in 2010 the key developments have been: More provision of location capabilities: Rapid growth in the market share of smartphones with effective location capabilities. This is approaching 50% and looks set to continue beyond this; Additionally, many feature phones now include location functions; Increased integration of satellite navigation capabilities into standard mobile phone chips makes positioning a default feature in many cases. Improved location capabilities: Increased use of multiple satellite navigation constellations provides better accuracy and availability; Maturing provision of WiFi positioning by major players such as Apple and Google as well as specialist providers complements satellite for indoor and urban use; More sophisticated hybrid positioning using a variety of methods helps to overcome environmental constraints. Increased demand from Emergency Agencies (EAs): With ever increasing numbers of calls from mobiles, and greater awareness of location capabilities, EA demand for mobile location information has increased; A number of providers have developed emergency location 'Apps' which provide basic emergency location functionality. 304664/TNC/TCS/02/A 6 July 2012 i Assessment of Mobile Location Technology – Update Developments since 2010 give the average user significantly improved location capabilities in a wider range of environments. Maximum accuracies have not changed greatly, but the time to fix is improved, as is availability. The trend for improved positioning is likely to continue; particularly as location based services are now strongly embedded in many aspects of online commerce. Supporting techniques are also likely to improve as pattern matching databases become more sophisticated and refined through crowd sourcing and other methods. Networks provide positioning, enhance handset positioning and communicate resulting location information to the emergency agencies. Network progress to date is now largely encapsulated in the LTE standards. The LTE Positioning Protocol (LPP) supports a number of positioning methods which can be used as primary or fallback methods such as assisted satellite positioning (A-GNSS), Uplink and Downlink Time Difference of Arrival and Enhanced Cell ID. LTE therefore provides opportunities for comprehensive location and secure, reliable forwarding of positioning information to the emergency services. The extent and rate of LTE implementation does however depend on the operators. The report presents three possible scenarios as a basis for progress. Scenarios 2 and 3 represent an evolution of the current situation into an LTE framework. Scenario 2 is the 'standard' approach while Scenario 3 makes provision for what should be a diminishing number of legacy handsets.