Editor's Note: this interview was conducted shortly before Apple's June 9 announcement of the next version of the iPhone, which will be available July 11. It does indeed utilize what Apple calls assisted GPS, although Apple didn't release any technical specifications on the GPS hardware or the positioning software. For that matter Apple didn't clarify if the forthcoming iPhone 3G's assisted GPS is traditional GPS, or some form of Wi-Fi/GPS hybrid.

Wi-Fi Location: a Powerful Ally for GPS

In this column and interview this month I return to my roots of recommending changes, additions, and future technology that will bring about what I like to call the Perfect Handheld GPS, or PHGPS.

I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the Where 2.0 Conference hosted by the O'Reilly group in San Francisco a few weeks ago, and while I was there I spent some time with the people from Skyhook Wireless. Now this fit my plans perfectly because I have been looking forward to writing a column on the positioning technology that resides in the current, first-generation Apple iPhone and iTouch, which is not GPS based but is a Wi-Fi based technology provided to Apple users through Skyhook Wireless. read more

Now this may come as a shock or surprise to some of you who own the iTouch or the iPhone, but currently the positioning information provided is not GPS based. Because of a recent discussion on the way to San Francisco, I thought it imperative that we get the message out. A gentleman sitting next to me on the plane pulled out his iPhone to check for messages and the email he had downloaded prior to takeoff, remarking to me that he just loved his iPhone, especially all the new GPS positioning capabilities it had embedded.

Now I guess I could have let his comment go and not said anything, but that is not my nature. I politely informed him that indeed the iTouch and iPhone positioning capabilities were great, but they had nothing to do with GPS. Whereupon my seat mate looked at me like I was crazy and said I did not know what I was talking about. Of course I produced my GPS World card and politely proceeded to tell him about the wonderful Wi-Fi technology that was providing his positioning information for his iPhone. It took awhile, but I think I finally convinced him.

So when I saw the Skyhook Wireless booth at the Where 2.0 Conference, I arranged to conduct an interview with Ted Morgan, its CEO and founder, which follows below.

Don Jewell (DJ): What can you tell me about the history of Skyhook Wireless, how you were founded, how long you've been around and how you got hooked-up with Steve Jobs and Apple?

Ted Morgan (TM): Michael Shean and I founded Skyhook Wireless in 2003. We had been working together at a company called e-Docs that was in the enterprise software space, and working with wireless carriers. We started Skyhook Wireless to take advantage of the increased interest in and incredible growth of Wi-Fi usage around the world. We were prototyping many ideas, but one of those ideas was using the prevalence of Wi-Fi signals for position determination.

(Editors Note: The coverage of one or more interconnected Wi-Fi access points can comprise an area as small as a single room with wireless-opaque walls or as large as many square miles covered by overlapping access points.)

DJ: And I assume that doing this is not as simple as it sounds?

TM: Well, that's right. What we have built is essentially a GPS-type system that uses Wi-Fi hotspots in place of satellites or cell towers. We are taking advantage of the fact that there have been over 70 million to 80 million new Wi-Fi devices purchased in the last couple of years worldwide, and we are using the technology that supports those devices.

These devices are being deployed wherever there are people and buildings such as businesses, libraries, coffee shops – any place with a hotspot and even private homes of course. Where ever you travel in the developed world today these signals are present, prevalent, and available, but they are not necessary tied or networked together for a single purpose, and neither do they have to be for us to make use of them.

But the signals do all behave in a similar way because they all adhere to a signal standard called 802.11. They act for our purposes like a beacon that sends out a signal every second announcing their presence. Every one of these beacons has a unique identifier that is broadcast along with the signal, and so if we see 30 access points we can tell them apart and use them. So we determined that this would be an ideal way to build a location system, plus it has some unique attributes that GPS and other systems don't have and I'll discuss those as we talk today.

So the trick obviously is how do you know where all these signals are? You and I can go to Circuit City and buy a Net Gear Wi-Fi box and plug it into our home network, but how does Skyhook Wireless know it is there? What we do actually is a massive survey. Skyhook employs about 400 people currently that literally drive up down city streets in all parts of the United States, and internationally as well, with specialized equipment that includes a GPS receiver, looking for these Wi-Fi signals. To date they have mapped about 50 million access points around the world.

DJ: Fifty million access points is a lot of data and a lot of coverage.

TM: You're right; it is and the coverage actually begins to look like cellular coverage. In the United States and Canada we have about 70 percent coverage. We followed the same procedures in Europe and we are about half way finished there. We are also working in Asia – same concept of course, but there we have people in vehicles and on bikes cruising the cities and country side looking for and mapping Wi-Fi signals to add to what has now become a massive database.

Once we have accomplished that the other part of the technology comes into play, which is the client location engine that runs on the device – your phone, your music player, your laptop. Basically anything that uses the Wi-Fi signals today can run our client. What that engine does is, when you say I want to plot my location, it will scan for all the Wi-Fi signals in range and compare the identifiers against our database of 50 million access points and find the locations associated with the signal identifiers and then with that information plot or triangulate your location, currently within about 20 meters, depending on if you are in an urban canyon environment or in a more open area.

DJ: That sounds like a lot of work for a small processor but I know from experience that it works very well and very quickly in the Apple iPhone and iTouch.

TM: Because of the way the Skyhook system is put together it adds a ton of attributes and value to existing positioning systems and technologies like GPS. It complements them because it is available where GPS is not. As you know, better than most people, GPS was originally built by the military for the military, to use for targeting munitions, for accuracy, etc. And it was designed for areas that have a clear view of the sky where four or more satellites are always in view. That is fantastic for that type of military application, but for the average consumer it doesn't always compute. A typical civil user may have a low-powered Wi-Fi enabled device in their back pack or in their pocket while they are indoors, or the user may be in an urban canyon location; regardless GPS is just not well -uited for those environments whereas the Skyhook technology is generated in these urban environments and it just really works well.

Wi-Fi signals are actually generated in surprisingly high numbers from these same urban canyon locations; they come from inside malls, homes and business locations which makes our solution much better suited to these environments that are a challenge for low-powered GPS signals. Wi-Fi is almost the inverse of GPS in these situations, where GPS performs poorly we actually perform very well and vice versa.

DJ: Actually what you are describing is similar to what GPS users would actually call a pseudolite system, or GPS rebroadcast system, except that in your case the signals are being broadcast by certified Wi-Fi devices, and users may or may not use that capability for a determination of their location. Plus, in your case the signal is essentially being broadcast by a relatively inexpensive piece of equipment, whereas GPS pseudoliotes are extremely expensive and you inherit a whole range of false and wrong-way path problems for an accurate GPS position.

TM: That's right Don plus we have another advantage, we don't have to build and maintain our own signal transmitters. We are just observing the Wi-Fi signals being transmitted and taking advantage of them. Also, GPS uses a fundamentally different system for positioning called time of arrival, and we basically just use signal strength and the signal identification. GPS can be very accurate so long as nothing is in the way, like buildings and trees, and the signal is not distorted. But the signal strength works much better with the Skyhook Wireless system because our signal goes through walls and buildings and works indoors. But of course it is not quite as accurate as GPS, although we are making some improvements and additions to our software to make the signal more accurate.

DJ: Speaking of accuracy, what does Skyhook Wireless claim for an accuracy level on most devices? Do you have some metric data?

TM: We do and we generally quote accuracies of 20 meters to 25 meters on average, which is not as accurate as GPS in an open area, but may be equal to or better than GPS in a crowded urban environment. And of course sometimes in the urban environments we work best in, the GPS device may not even be able to receive a signal.

DJ: As you may know there are some new sensitive GPS receivers on the market today, such as the latest SiRF receivers, that do sometimes work indoors to some degree, if you are close to a window. My experience with these receivers is that the position is usually no better than 20 meters to 25 meters, so it would be equal to the Skyhook position, if the receiver was able to get a signal. Of course it would not work at all with the current military receivers, because they are not capable of receiving signals indoors. So the Skyhook capability would be a big plus to our war fighters.

TM: Yes it would be a big asset, and as far as the new more sensitive GPS receivers, like SiRF are concerned, you also have the problems that come with increased sensitivity, of wrong-way path and multi-path signals, etc. You may get a signal, but you may also get several signals from the same satellite which causes you problems.

DJ: That's absolutely correct and I understand that this Wi-Fi capability works so well because the Wi-Fi signals are much closer and much stronger. Does it make a difference whether the Wi-Fi signals are encoded or encrypted or not?

TM: No it does not make any difference because we don't actually distinguish between the two types of signals. We don't actually use or connect to the signal for anything except for the signal identifier and location of the transmitter. We don't get into the system itself, that's why we need to have the huge database of Wi-Fi signal transmitter locations. In fact I think we have found that most of the systems we use do actually have some sort of encrypted protocols on the signal, but for our purposes we don't distinguish between the encrypted or unencrypted signals.

DJ: Now let's talk a bit now about how you got hooked-up with the Apple iTouch and the iPhone as a location service.

TM: The service we provide and the value we bring to the customer is as a location service. As people, device makers, and carriers started seeing the value in adding location services, they started looking for ways to put it on a device. Now some devices come with location as a GPS or cellular service, but many don't, so previously a device that had Wi-Fi capability but did not have a GPS chip was out of luck for running any of the cool location applications that were available.

But now with our software, and without changing any hardware on the device, Wi-Fi enabled devices can have a location accuracy close to that of GPS and indeed you can use the device as you would an actual GPS device. And that capability is actually what interested Apple. They rolled out the first generation of the iPhone and iTouch that had Wi-Fi built in, but did not have a location capability that many consumers demanded. Their choice was to wait for a later GPS-capable version or go with our technology and have the location capability immediately without any hardware changes to the device.

The Apple engineers had all sorts of ideas and applications for making use of a location capability on their devices, so that's what Apple did, they licensed our client software for all the iTouch and iPhone devices. It is now in their firmware and part of their core underlying services, so they can use this capability in their maps applications and they can write other applications for the devices that take advantage of the Skyhook Wireless capability. This is of course also a big deal for us because now we have our software on over 20,000,000 devices around the world and it helps Apple because they can provide a better product and experience for their customers.

So that is one side of it, but aside from just Apple there are actually a whole host of companies that are using our technology, like AOL and instant messaging (IM), or IM for laptops which allows you to add your location to your buddy list and your messages so you know where your buddies are located.

There is a lot of value to adding location applications to devices that in the past did not have that capability. But going forward, device makers are getting more serious every day about location capabilities in their devices, and we are starting to see consumers demand the capability. Now for the device makers it is less about "do we put the radio in the device?" and more "can it really provide the user with a location?" For example, Nokia put out their first GPS-enabled handset, the N95, with location capability about a year and a half ago, and it was a initially a big hit. Consumers quickly fell in love with the product and all the things it could do, like mapping, digital photography, friend finders, etc.

But the biggest complaint users had about the N95 was the performance of the GPS chip. The complaints were that it took too long, two or three minutes typically, to get a fix, it did not work well in urban environments or indoors, and the accuracy varied dramatically with the environment. So in these types of cases one solution would be to provide the consumer with a device that has GPS and Wi-Fi, where we work to seamlessly provide what we call a consumer ready location. When you are out on the open road the GPS works well and the Wi-Fi capability works equally as well in urban areas as well as indoors, and it provides you with a fix in less than a second. So you have the best of both worlds. You can do things like geotagging images and quick local searches without having to wait for GPS to synchronize.

DJ: That is certainly impressive, a quality fix in less than a second. Even if it is 20 meters, that would still be very useful. How do you get a fix so quickly?

TM: Well, it's simple really. If you look at how our device works, we are searching for signals, doing a table lookup, and performing some algorithms locally on the device. None of which is very complicated, and it is fast.

DJ: That brings me to my next question: exactly how much horsepower is required on the host device for it to work properly?

TM: Well it's not a computationally heavy client and it really does not require much horsepower at all. We work on devices that have as little as 150 MHz to 200 MHZ computational capability, and when you add us to a device that has the horsepower necessary to run GPS, it is definitely more than adequate for our client.

DJ: That's good to know. Now how exactly did you and Steve Jobs, or maybe I should say Skyhook Wireless and Apple, get hooked-up?

TM: Well my business partner Mike Shean had been talking to Apple for about six months, letting them know about our capabilities and our desire to work with them, and we had actually showed Apple a couple of prototypes of equipment running our client. But of course Apple was in the middle of launching the iPhone, so they were incredibly preoccupied. Then in August of last year I received – out of the blue – a phone call from Steve Jobs wanting to know if we would come out and show them how our software worked, and meet with him and his team and talk more about the technology. That really kicked things into a different gear. We put together a deal very quickly after that, and in a couple of months we were on the iPhone and iTouch.

DJ: That's a great success story.

TM: It just shows that when you get to the right guy things can move very quickly.

DJ: I've got to quickly relay a story to you about the ubiquity of GPS. Most people don't have a clue that they use it almost every minute of every day in some way, usually for timing purposes. Then there are those that think they are using it and they really aren't. A case in point: recently on an airplane during one of my many trips I was sitting beside an elderly gentleman who was using his iPhone to check his email. I commented that my wife had one and really loved it. And then he remarked that his wife really liked it as well, especially the GPS location capability. I agreed of course, but I politely pointed out that it was not really using GPS for location because it did not have GPS. He of course told me that I was mistaken because the iTouch knew where it was all the time, and how else could it do that unless it had an embedded GPS chip? Not wanting to get into a big argument I let it go, but I think you would be surprised at how many people that use the iPhone and the iTouch on a daily basis actually think they are seeing a GPS position. Now I think this story really has some significance for the routine acceptance of GPS and your Wi-Fi capability as well.

TM: You're absolutely right and I agree, there is a lot to your story. It is a credit to how well Apple has implemented the consumer experience, where you just use the device and don't worry about where the technology comes from. It is also a credit to the great work the people here at Skyhook Wireless have done in building a system that works seamlessly, and it gives you some insight into what users really expect. They generally don't really want to know where the signal comes from or how it is processed, they just want to see the pin on the map that shows where their location is. And they want it to happen fast.

For some users it might be nice for them to know how it happens, but we have found that most consumers don't really care; they just want it to work, anywhere, anytime, which brings me back to the problem that Nokia was having with its N95 mobile phone. The company was telling users who called in asking why they couldn't get a position, to just go stand outside for a few minutes and they would eventually get a fix. People want it to work where they are; they don't want to have to go stand outside. You just can't do that, it just doesn't work in today's sophisticated marketplace.

DJ: I agree, and following along that line, what do you expect to see Apple do in the near future, say in the next generation of iPhone? Do you think we will see an embedded GPS along with the Skyhook Wireless system?

TM: Our expectation is that when the new iPhone comes out, if it does have GPS embedded, that Apple will combine the two location systems seamlessly,and it will be transparent to the user. Whatever application the system uses that depends on location, it will be provided to the user, giving them location information when and wherever they need it.

DJ: I sure hope that is what happens. Several journalists like myself that write about technology have been corresponding lately, and we all expect to see what you just described in the next version of the iTouch and the iPhone. And we have all been talking with our nation's war fighters, and it is readily apparent that they really need this technology. They are constantly in buildings and urban canyon situations where GPS works intermittently or not at all, and a good system augmentation, like the Skyhook Wireless Wi-Fi capability, would be a critical asset for them to have. I know from discussions with our war fighters, from their e-mails, that there are a large number of Wi-Fi signals available both in Iraq and Afghanistan.

TM: That's right; Baghdad is actually pretty well blanketed with signals.

DJ: It is, and a lot of those are friendly Wi-Fi networks. But as you said earlier, your system really does not care who is sending the signal as long as you have the location of the transmitter in your database. For the war fighters, if you were to link the GPS and Wi-Fi systems seamlessly in a device, then they would have a position within a second or two of turning on the device, no matter where they were located, as long as a Wi-Fi signal was available. The Wi-Fi would provide an immediate location to within about 20 meters; while the GPS receiver was synchronizing, downloading an almanac and processing the satellites in view, the war fighter would have a position. Once GPS came on line, it would be refined down to six meters or less. Plus, when the war fighters entered an urban canyon situation or went indoors they would still have an accurate position. This really sounds like a capability that we need to have in the Perfect Handheld GPS device for our war fighters.

TM: I agree, and indeed most everything we are focused on right now is at the hybrid level. We are always looking for new algorithms that can combine different location resources together. Not only can we use Wi-Fi to help a GPS device provide a better position sooner while we provide the Wi-Fi fix, but vice versa. There are also some new algorithms that we are developing that actually dramatically improve the Wi-Fi position accuracy. We do this by using just two GPS satellite signals, without ever calculating a fix, but just by using the signal from those satellites as we would a Wi-Fi signal, we can improve the Wi-Fi position accuracy by 50 percent. We have found, for instance, that the faint GPS signal that usually exists even indoors, while not enough for a GPS device to obtain an accurate fix, it is enough of a signal for us to use and we can improve the Wi-Fi position by half, using this new model.

DJ: That's really a great way to marry the two technologies and now that you mention it, I have used some GPS receivers, especially ones with the latest SiRF technology, that actually do give you a position, not a very accurate one, but at least it is a position, indoors. But what you are talking about could really revolutionize GPS. Aiding in the urban canyon situation, and the fact that it is software based and can run on any GPS device, makes it very appealing.

TM: Exactly, and the other thing is that we feel strongly that the SiRF technology is the best core GPS technology out there today. We have a technology agreement with them and have had for almost a year now; and we are looking to have a similar relationship with the other GPS receiver manufacturers as well.

The only problem is that when you get into a volume consumer device like a mobile phone, you loose a lot of the advantages you would have with a stand-alone GPS device. The mobile phone handset manufacturers deal in volume and they invariably use cheaper materials for critical items like antennas, and are more sensitive about battery life and power usage. Plus the form factor of some mobile phone handsets affects the antenna placement and subsequently the signal reception may not be the best. Even the SiRF GPS receiver module on one of these mass produced devices actually has a hard time getting a fix indoors, whereas you and I both know that if the SiRF engine were in a dedicated Garmin or Trimble GPS device, there would be no problem obtaining some kind of a fix indoors. So there are still some unique challenges that need to be overcome.

And by the way, we call this technology a hybrid GPS technology. It complements and assists GPS and the word that everyone in the community is using today for what we are producing is a "hybrid GPS system."

DJ: You may not be aware that many of our war fighters have obtained government waivers that allow them to use civil and commercial GPS units for specific applications in their AOR, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan, for many reason that I can't go into. Of course, I can't speak for them but if you were to work with, let's say, the folks at Trimble, about adding your technology to their Nomad and Juno ST devices, it would probably be a tremendous deal for both companies. And it would benefit our war fighters directly, because we know there are war fighters using these devices in-country with the blessing of the U.S. government.

Now there are war fighters using other civil GPS devices as well without obtaining a waiver, so any deals you make with those manufacturers would still probably have a positive effect on our war fighters and their critical need to know reliably where they are at all times, indoors as well as outside. Plus you might give Rockwell Collins a call. They manufacture most of the handheld GPS equipment used by our war fighters today, and they might be interested in talking with you about incorporating your technology as well. I won't comment on the government requirements process that would be involved, but Rockwell Collins knows all about that. The bottom line is, we need to get this technology into the hands of our war fighters any way we can.

TM: I think it would be great if we could do that, and it would be great to have some enthusiasm from the mainline GPS producers, like the folks at Trimble and Garmin. We have had some resistance from what we call the hardcore GPS manufacturers, and we have had to overcome a tremendous amount of skepticism from some GPS engineers. It is hard to get them to admit that GPS won't work every where it is needed, especially in the military environment. We would welcome the opportunity to work with them.

DJ: That's great to hear, and I hope that what some people learn by reading this interview will help in that process and maybe open a few doors for you. What you are doing can only help our war fighters.

TM: What we are trying to do is explain the benefits of what we are doing and help improve the GPS and location-based environment. I think you are going to see a renewed consumer-based interest in all things location based as Apple makes its announcements this month. I think there will be a lot more location-based applications launched, because of Apple, as the next generation iPhone and iTouch are made available.

We believe that Apple will more fully open-up the iPhone and the iTouch for developers, and we are aware of hundreds of developers that are just waiting for that opportunity. We know of a couple hundred developers that are building location-based services around these devices. It will open people's eyes to all the things that can be done today. There is just so much that remains to be accomplished in this arena, and that includes applications for the military side of the house as well.

DJ: Is there anything else new that you would like to talk about?

TM: Well certainly there is always something new on the horizon. We have spent the last several years focused on the Wi-Fi capability and working to mature the Wi-Fi technology. We have spent the last couple of years building out the system, expanding coverage around the world, incorporating it and fine tuning it on different mobile devices. Now that it is finally coming to fruition we are starting to look beyond Wi-Fi at other complimentary technologies, such as the hybrid GPS and Wi-Fi algorithms we mentioned earlier, as well as cell tower, radio and television broadcast signals and locations so our Skyhook Wireless client will be able to use whatever signals are available to the device.

DJ: This sounds like it parallels what Dr. James (Jim) Spilker is doing at Rosum. They have developed algorithms that use radio and television signals and their transmitter locations for location-based applications. Is what you are doing something similar to that?

TM: I have heard of Rosum, certainly, and they are pitching the same value model. It is similar to what we do, except they depend on a hardware device, a chip, and that makes it a hardware sell, whereas our client is purely software so it is somewhat easier to implement on a device.

DJ: You mentioned that you have working arrangements with Apple, Nokia and AOL. Are there some other companies that will be using your technology in the future that we should look for?

TM: Those are certainly the big names, but we are working with a great many smaller companies as well on some really interesting projects. In fact, last week we just announced a project with a small company called Eye-Fi that works with geotagging images on digital cameras. They have put a Wi-Fi chip inside a 2 GB SD storage card. The capability, called Eye-Fi Explore, turns any digital camera with an SD slot into a Wi-Fi camera capable of geo-coding the images. Plus when you come home after taking pictures, the card in the digital camera links with your Wi-Fi system and downloads the pictures to the device of your choice without having to remove and insert the card into another device. It also automatically synchronizes with your Wi-Fi system, making the whole process very painless.

DJ: Now that sounds like a very useful product. Does this also mean that all your pictures are automatically geocoded with time and position? Does this information stay embedded with the digital photo as it is transmitted digitally from place to place and stored on different devices? Because if it does, I can see some immediate military applications.

TM: Yes it does, and you see that is exactly where our piece comes in. Because the camera now has a Wi-Fi capability with the new Eye-Fi SD card, we can automatically geocode and geotag the pictures with a time and geographical coordinates. This is a real hot topic in the marketplace right now. This allows you to file or sort through thousands of images not just by date or subject, but by location and time as well. Plus wherever you send that digital picture the embedded geocoded information is sent with it.

DJ: My immediate thoughts for the war fighters are that they can now take a picture of an improvised explosive device (IED), for instance, and wirelessly send that image back to their headquarters with a location (latitude and longitude) and a time stamp. Plus the ordnance disposal personnel will be able to see the device and headquarters will be able to put out an immediate announcement about the location of the IED to other personnel that might be in the area, or that are planning on traveling through the area. So for operations, mission planning, and mission changes this could really be a tremendously valuable capability.

TM: Plus you can see a pictorial history of the devices and start tracking terrorist patterns as well. Photographers everywhere are big fans of this technology. Geocoding and geotagging are important to them, but in the past it has not always been easy to do with a dedicated GPS device and all that it entails. With this capability it is added to their camera system as soon as they insert the chip, and it gives them not only geotagging but a digital camera with a communications device as well. It is really catching on.

For those that are interested in knowing more, they can always go to our website and get more information. We have press releases, specification sheets with lots of details, and we have case studies, so you can see how other folks are using our products. There is a short video featuring Steve Jobs talking about our application on the iPhone and the iTouch. Plus there are some global coverage maps and even some animated demo's.