Hybrid Solution Touted for Raising Wireless E-911 Accuracy
The FCC should embrace a hybrid tack on E-911 location technology, combining the benefits of network- and handset- based technologies, to get truly improved accuracy, Polaris Wireless and TruePosition told the agency in comments. FCC Chairman Kevin Martin noted a hybrid solution’s potential when the FCC sought comments on making wireless and VoIP E- 911 more accurate in a rulemaking notice approved in June.
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“This isn’t a panacea,” Marty Feuerstein, Polaris chief technology officer, told us Wednesday. “We do see ways that can improve things, that can move in the direction that the FCC wants them to move… To us, hybrid makes perfect sense. It’s something that the industry could capitalize on now.”
Polaris and TruePosition offer systems that help pinpoint callers using the wireless network. Both say combining their technology and handsets using GPS chips with a handset-based E-911 solution would allow more accurate tracing of emergency callers than now.
TruePosition’s “uplink time difference of arrival” technology locates wireless devices by measuring the duration of signals they transmit at special receivers at cell sites and other locations. Polaris’ wireless location signatures technology software improves accuracy by using data carriers collect routinely to create a “signature” for each location in a region. When a call is made the system uses signatures to fix its point of origin. The technology works best in densely populated areas.
TruePosition told the FCC a hybrid solution combining its technology with assisted GPS offers “the best performance of any individual technology or any hybrid available today or in the foreseeable future.” “Although I think some folks believe this is the way to go, others want more testing before anything is determined,” said Mike Amarosa, senior vice president at TruePosition: “It takes the best of both worlds.”
“If you combine a network-based and a handset-based technology into this hybrid you can dramatically improve technology,” Feuerstein said.