Efficient distance-aware query evaluation on indoor moving objects

Broadcasting data with an index is an effective way to disseminate public information to a large clients. For a server, using multiple channels to provide services (e.g., location-based services) makes the broadcast cycle shorter than using one channel. Among location-based services, the k nearest neighbors (k-NN) search is an important one and finds the fc closest objects to a query point in a multi-dimensional space. This paper considers k nearest neighbors search on a broadcast R-tree in a multi-channel environment. We assume that a mobile client can only tune into a specified channel at one time instance. We study how a server generates the broadcast schedules on multiple channels and explore how a client executes the k-NN search on the broadcast. Different broadcast schedules with the client k-NN search processing makes different k-NN search protocols. The objectives of the protocols is to minimize the latency (i.e., the time elapsed between issuing and termination of the query), tuning time (i.e., the amount of time spent on listening to the channel), and the memory usage for k-NN search processing. Last, we present our experiments and the experiment results validate that our mechanisms achieve the objectives.

The increasing availability of indoor positioning, driven by techniques like RFID, Bluetooth, and smart phones, enables a variety of indoor location-based services (LBSs). Efficient queries based on semantic-constraint in indoor spaces play an important role in supporting and boosting LBSs. However, the existing indoor index techniques cannot support these semantic constraints-based queries. To solve this problem, this paper addresses the challenge of indexing moving objects in indoor spaces, in which both the moving objects and the indoor environments include semantic meanings. We present an indoor semantic-based model, which gives the formal description of semantics of indoor cells and moving objects. Then, a new semantic-based index is proposed for indoor environment, which can support queries under semantic constraint. In addition, we develop efficient algorithms for two new queries, which are the nearest neighbor query based on semantic constraints for static indoor cells and moving objects, respectively. The conducted experiment demonstrates that the proposed index structure is effective, robust, and efficient.

Mobile devices with Global Positioning System enable various kinds of location information searches using location based services (LBS). Location information and query contents of searchers are privacy information. Privacy protection requires to hide location information and query contents of searchers from not only third parties such as eavesdroppers but also location database servers which answer queries. This paper focuses on privacy protection in nearest neighbor search. There are several researches of secure computation in nearest neighbor search for other than LBS. This paper proposes a new method of privacy protection in LBS. The method is based on Asymmetric Scalar-product Preserving Encryption. This paper also shows that the proposed method is faster and more secure than conventional privacy protection methods in LBS.

Different indoor representation methods have been studied for their ability to provide indoor location-based services (LBS). Among them, omnidirectional imaging is one of the most typical and simple methods for representing an indoor space. However, a georeferenced omnidirectional image cannot be used for simple attribute searches, spatial queries, and spatial awareness analyses. To perform these functions, topological data are needed to define the features of and spatial relationships among spatial objects including indoor spaces as well as facilities like CCTV cameras considered in patrol service applications. Therefore, this study proposes an indoor space application data model for an indoor patrol service that can implement functions suited to linking indoor space data and service objects. In order to do this, the study presents a method for linking data between omnidirectional images representing indoor spaces and topological data on indoor spaces based on the concept of IndoorGML. Also, we conduct an experimental implementation of the integrated 3D indoor navigation model for patrol service using GIS data. Based on the results, we evaluate the benefits of using such a 3D data fusion method that integrates omnidirectional images with vector-based topological data models based on IndoorGML for providing indoor LBS in built environments.

A range nearest-neighbor (RNN) query retrieves the nearest neighbor (NN) for every point in a range. It is a natural generalization of point and continuous nearest-neighbor queries and has many applications. In this paper, we consider the ranges as (hyper)rectangles and propose efficient in-memory processing and secondary memory pruning techniques for RNN queries in both 2D and high-dimensional spaces. These techniques are generalized for kRNN queries, which return the k nearest neighbors for every point in the range. In addition, we devise an auxiliary solution-based index EXO-tree to speed up any type of NN query. EXO-tree is orthogonal to any existing NN processing algorithm and, thus, can be transparently integrated. An extensive empirical study was conducted to evaluate the CPU and I/O performance of these techniques, and the study showed that they are efficient and robust under various data sets, query ranges, numbers of nearest neighbors, dimensions, and cache sizes.

A crowd enabled approach for processing nearest neighbor and range queries in incomplete databases with accuracy guarantee

In several emerging and important applications, such as location-based services, sensor monitoring and biological databases, the values of the data items are inherently imprecise. A useful query class for these data is the Probabilistic Nearest-Neighbor Query (PNN), which yields the IDs of objects for being the closest neighbor of a query point, together with the objects’ probability values. Previous studies showed that this query takes a long time to evaluate. To address this problem, we propose the Constrained Nearest-Neighbor Query (C-PNN), which returns the IDs of objects whose probabilities are higher than some threshold, with a given error bound in the answers. We show that the C-PNN can be answered efficiently with verifiers. These are methods that derive the lower and upper bounds of answer probabilities, so that an object can be quickly decided on whether it should be included in the answer. We design five verifiers, which can be used on uncertain data with arbitrary probability density functions. We further develop a partial evaluation technique, so that a user can obtain some answers quickly, without waiting for the whole query evaluation process to be completed (which may incur a high response time). In addition, we examine the maintenance of a long-standing, or continuous C-PNN query. This query requires any update to be applied to the result immediately, in order to reflect the changes to the database values (e.g., due to the change of the location of a moving object). We design an incremental update method based on previous query answers, in order to reduce the amount of I/O and CPU cost in maintaining the correctness of the answers to such a query. Performance evaluation on realistic datasets show that our methods are capable of yielding timely and accurate results.

실내공간이 점차 복잡해짐에 따라 실외뿐만 아니라 실내에서도 LBS (Location Based Service)의 수요가 증가하고 있다. 그러나 실생활에 편의를 주는 LBS의 이면에는 개인의 위치 노출과 이로 인한 프라이버시 침해의 문제가 포함되어 있다. 위치 K-익명화 기술은 적어도 K-1명의 다른 사용자를 포함시키는 ASR (Anonymized Spatial Region)을 생성하여 위치를 은폐하여 이러한 프라이버시 문제를 해결하는 대표적인 연구 분야이다. 하지만 기존 연구들은 대부분 유클리디안 거리를 기반으로 하는 실외 공간에서 이루어 졌으며, 구조물에 의해 제약이 있는 실내공간에 적용시키기에는 한계점이 존재한다. 이에 본 논문에서는 실내공간의 구조와 위치 표현 방법을 고려하여 위치 은폐를 위한 K-익명화 방법을 제안한다. 위치의 은폐를 위해 실내공간의 계층 구조를 생성하여 이 구조에서 K-1명의 다른 사용자를 포함하도록 노드를 확장시키는 방법을 소개한다. 또한 제안된 방법의 성능을 분석하기 위하여 K와 계층구조의 특성에 따른 비용모델도 함께 제시한다. Due to complexity of indoor space, the demand of Location Based Services (LBS) in indoor space is increasing as well as outdoor. However, it includes privacy problems of exposing personal location. Location K-anonymity technology is a method to solve the privacy problems with cloaking their locations by Anonymized Spatial Region(ASR). It guarantees K users within a region containing the location of a given user. However previous researches have dealt the problems based on Euclidean distance in outdoor space, and cannot be applied in indoor space where there are constraints of movement such as walls. For this reason, we propose in this paper a K-anonymity for cloaking indoor location in consideration of structures and representation of indoor space. The basic concept of our approach is to introduce a hierarchical structure as ASR for including K-1 users for cloaking their locations. We also proposed a cost model by K and attributes of hierarchical structure to analyze the performance of the method.

Developed from Nearest Neighbor (NN) queries, Aggregate Nearest Neighbor (ANN) queries return the object that minimizes an aggregate distance function with respect to a set of query points. Because of the multiple query points, ANN queries are much more complex than NN queries. For optimizing the query processing and improving the query efficiency, many ANN queries algorithms utilizes pruning strategies, with or without an index structure. Obviously, the pruning effect highly depends on the tightness of the bound estimation. In this paper, we figure out a property in vector space and develop some efficient bound estimations for two most popular types of ANN queries. Based on these bounds, we design the indexed and non-index ANN algorithms, and conduct experimental studies. Our algorithms show good performance, especially for high dimensional queries, for both real dataset and synthetic datasets.

Nearest-neighbor search, which returns the nearest neighbor of a query point in a set of points, is an important and widely studied problem in many fields, and it has wide range of applications. In many of them, such as sensor databases, location-based services, face recognition, and mobile data, the location of data is imprecise. We therefore study nearest-neighbor queries in a probabilistic framework in which the location of each input point is specified as a probability distribution function. We present efficient algorithms for - computing all points that are nearest neighbors of a query point with nonzero probability; and - estimating the probability of a point being the nearest neighbor of a query point, either exactly or within a specified additive error.

Most of the mobile phones have GPS sensors which make location based service (LBS) applicable. LBS brings not only convenience but also location privacy leak to us. Achieving anonymity and sending private queries are two main privacy-preserving courses in LBS. A novel location privacy-preserving method is proposed based on Voronoi graph partition on road networks. Firstly, based on the prediction of a user's moving direction, a cooperative k-anonymity method is proposed without constructing cloaking regions which may lead to efficiency decline in continuous query. And then, a query algorithm is proposed without providing any user's actual location, replaced by continuous anchor sequence, to LBS provider. This algorithm can work out precise results according to candidate sets returned by LBS provider and it also solves uneven distribution problem in SpaceTwist. Performance analysis and experiments show that our method achieves a preferable tradeoff between QoS and location privacy preserving; it has obvious advantages compared with other methods.

Location-based services (LBSs) have entered into people’s daily lives with the evolution of telecommunication technologies. LBSs are the services that consider the locations of users to provide tailored information. We study a variety of location-based queries in urban environments. Mainly, we focus on processing such queries in the indoor space motivated by the abundance of applications of indoor LBSs and lack of existing studies supporting indoor spatial queries. Although the spatial query processing has been extensively studied for outdoor space, these techniques are not efficient when applied to indoor venues due to inherent differences in the topology of indoor space.

Focus on indoor spatial applications has been rising with the growing interest in indoor spaces. Along with the widespread use of mobile devices and the internet, it has increased demands for indoor location-based services (LBS), demanding more efficient representation and management of indoor spatial data. Indoor points of interest (Indoor POI) data, representing both spaces and facilities located indoors, provide the infrastructure for these services. These datasets are vital in delivering timely and accurate information to users, such as in cases of managing indoor facilities. However, even though there are studies that explore its use across applications and efforts exerted towards the standardization of the data model, most POI development studies have focused on the outdoors and remain underdeveloped in the indoors. In this paper, we propose a spatial-temporal Indoor POI data model to provide direction for the establishment of indoor POI data and to address limitations in currently available data specifications. By exploring how different Indoor POIs are from its outdoor counterparts, particularly on extending its outdoor counterparts’ functions on searching, sharing, and labeling, we describe the data model and its components using the Unified Modeling Language (UML). We perform an SQL-based query experiment to demonstrate the potential use of the data model using sample data.

With the development of indoor positioning methods, such as Wi-Fi positioning, geomagnetic sensor positioning, Ultra-Wideband positioning, and pedestrian dead reckoning, the area of location-based services (LBS) is expanding from outdoor to indoor spaces. LBS refers to the geographic location information of moving objects to provide the desired services. Most Wi-Fi-based indoor positioning methods provide two-dimensional (2D) or three-dimensional (3D) coordinates in 1–5 m of accuracy on average approximately. However, many applications of indoor LBS are targeted to specific spaces such as rooms, corridors, stairs, etc. Thus, they require determining a service space from a coordinate in indoor spaces. In this paper, we propose a map matching method to assign an indoor position to a unit space a subdivision of an indoor space, called USMM (Unit Space Map Matching). Map matching is a commonly used localization improvement method that utilizes spatial constraints. We consider the topological information between unit spaces and moving objects’ probabilistic properties, compared to existing room-level mappings based on sensor signals, especially received signal strength-based fingerprinting. The proposed method has the advantage of calculating the probability even if there is only one input trajectory. Last, we analyze the accuracy and performance of the proposed USMM methods by extensive experiments in real and synthetic environments. The experimental results show that our methods bring a significant improvement when the accuracy level of indoor positioning is low. In experiments, the room-level location accuracy improves by almost 30% and 23% with real and synthetic data, respectively. We conclude that USMM methods are helpful to correct valid room-level locations from given positioning locations.

With recent progress of mobile devices and indoor positioning technologies, it becomes possible to provide location-based services in indoor space as well as outdoor space. It is in a seamless way between indoor and outdoor spaces or in an independent way only for indoor space. However, we cannot simply apply spatial models developed for outdoor space to indoor space due to their differences. For example, coordinate reference systems are employed to indicate a specific position in outdoor space, while the location in indoor space is rather specified by cell number such as room number. Unlike outdoor space, the distance between two points in indoor space is not determined by the length of the straight line but the constraints given by indoor components such as walls, stairs, and doors. For this reason, we need to establish a new framework for indoor space from fundamental theoretical basis, indoor spatial data models, and information systems to store, manage, and analyse indoor spatial data. In order to provide this framework, an international standard, called IndoorGML has been developed and published by OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium). This standard is based on a cellular notion of space, which considers an indoor space as a set of non-overlapping cells. It consists of two types of modules; core module and extension module. While core module consists of four basic conceptual and implementation modeling components (geometric model for cell, topology between cells, semantic model of cell, and multi-layered space model), extension modules may be defined on the top of the core module to support an application area. As the first version of the standard, we provide an extension for indoor navigation.