The CDMA Development Group announced it plans to conduct trials of location technologies as part of an initiative to meet Federal Communications Commission wireless enhanced 911 requirements.
Phase II of the FCC’s E911 mandate requires wireless carriers to be able to provide to public-safety answering points the location of a wireless 911 caller to within 125 meters, 67 percent of the time. The deadline for Phase II is Oct. 1, 2001.
The mandate has triggered a market for a number of companies hoping to capitalize on it with technologies designed to locate wireless handsets.
“The goal is to identify the technology that not only meets E911 requirements, but proves to offer the best solution for a cdmaOne network,” said Perry LaForge, executive director of the CDG.
The idea to run location technology trials came out of the group’s Radio Location Forum held in April. CDG member carriers were able to examine the latest location technologies and determined the next step would be large-scale system trials with various location technology vendors.
The trials have been organized into three categories with teams established to evaluate handset-based, network-based and hybrid location technologies. Handset-based technologies either incorporate Global Positioning System receivers in handsets or use GPS signals at the handset. Network-based technologies use equipment at cell sites that calculate location primarily using either Time Difference of Arrival or Angle of Arrival algorithms. Hybrid technologies make use of both GPS and network-based equipment to locate callers.
The CDG said additional trial teams will be created to address other technology options if necessary.
Jim Takach, advanced systems team leader at the CDG, declined to name which carriers and location technology vendors are scheduled to participate in the trials. Takach said about 20 carriers and between 10 and 15 manufacturers, including both location technology vendors and wireless infrastructure vendors, will participate in the trials.
The CDG will not use the trial results to make recommendations. Instead, it will provide data to carriers so they can choose one or a combination of the technologies available, said Takach.
Test criteria are expected to be formulated by the end of this month, and interim trial results are targeted to be available by October. The trials are expected to be completed by next April, giving carriers about two years to implement location technologies on their networks.
Some location vendors have said Code Division Multiple Access technology poses unique challenges to locating callers. One concern is that the low-power output inherent to the technology makes it difficult for enough cell sites to capture information from the handset in order to determine a location.
Sam Samara, director of technical programs at the CDG, said the group doesn’t anticipate cdmaOne will pose significant problems to any of the location technologies.
“All of [the location technologies] have hurdles,” he said. “Triangulation is just one of them.”
Samara noted that for soft handoffs to occur on cdmaOne networks today, more than one cell site must “see” a wireless phone. Therefore, low-power output should not preclude technologies that use triangulation from working on cdmaOne networks, he said.
