Pervasive location-based systems : the fundamental challenges between vision and reality

Ideally, a pervasive location-based system should allow mobile users to go anywhere and benefit from personalized and pro-active services tailored for their current activity. However, existing location-based systems are still far from this vision, as they are either aimed at very specific activities or too generic to provide real value to specific user activities. The objective of this work is to identify and characterize the most fundamental challenges involved in the design of pervasive location-based systems. The approach is based on the idea that such challenges will correspond to the key design tradeoffs for location-based systems. Building on what is believed to be the high-level requirements for a truly pervasive location-based system, this paper proposes a design space with four design dimensions: functional scope, added-value, pro-activity, and adaptability. After analyzing a representative set of location-based systems under that design space, the combinations between functional scope and any of the other dimensions are identified as the main contradictions in the design of such systems. The paper finally discusses the research challenges associated to the identified tradeoffs