Location awareness through trajectory prediction

Location-aware computing is a type of ubiquitous computing that uses user's location information as an essential parameter for providing services and application-related optimization. Location management plays an important role in location-aware computing because the provision of services requires convenient access to dynamic location and location-dependent information. Many existing location management strategies are passive since they rely on system capability to periodically record current location information. In contrast, active strategies predict user movement through trajectories and locations. Trajectory prediction provides richer location and context information and facilitates the means for adapting to future locations. In this paper, we present two models for trajectory prediction, namely probability-based model and learning-based model. We analyze these two models and conduct experiments to test their performances in location-aware systems. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.