Location-Based Services for Cellular Phones Using Wi-Fi: The University of Cincinnati's System for Emergency Call Location

Virtually every new smartphone coming to market now has Wi-Fi functionality, and Wi-Fi is preferred for data services due to its high performance and low cost. Many universities already offer Wi-Fi in lecture theaters, cafes and residence halls, and are now expanding their WLANs to cover their entire campus. This paper describes a novel system developed by the University of Cincinnati which enables on-campus location-based services for conventional voice calls from cell phones by recognizing and locating the Wi-Fi signal associated with the handset via the campus WLAN.