Efficient tracking of moving objects with precision guarantees

Sustained advances in wireless communications, geo-positioning, and consumer electronics pave the way to a kind of location-based service that relies on the tracking of the continuously changing positions of an entire population of service users. This type of service is characterized by large volumes of updates, giving prominence to techniques for location representation and update. This paper presents several representations, along with associated update techniques, that predict the present and future positions of moving objects. An update occurs when the deviation between the predicted and the actual position of an object exceeds a given threshold. For the case where the road network, in which an object is moving, is known, we propose a so-called segment-based policy that predicts an object's movement according to the road's shape. Map matching is used for determining the road on which an object is moving. Empirical performance studies based on a real road network and GPS logs from cars are reported.