Location Based Services (LBS)

Location Based Services enable personalized (customized) services to be offered based on a person’s (or item’s) location. Services include areas of security, fleet and resource management, location based information, vehicle tracking, person-to-person location and messaging applications. To enable these services, there are a number of different technology layers that need to be coordinated on a network. These technologies include Applications, Middleware, Determination technologies and associated Silicon and Intellectual Property (IP).

Some examples of location-based services are:

• Requesting the nearest business or service, such as an ATM or restaurant
  
• Turn by turn navigation to any address
  
• Locating people on a map displayed on the mobile phone
  
• Receiving alerts, such as notification of a sale on gas or warning of a traffic jam
  
• Location-based mobile advertising
  
• Asset recovery combined with active RF to find, for example, stolen assets in containers where GPS wouldn't work
  

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Location-based_service

Source: http://www.watblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/a-gps-944.jpg