Products > Location-Based Services > GSM Infrastructure > Serving Mobile Location Center (SMLC)

Xypoint® Serving Mobile Location Center (SMLC)

Location Servers

The Serving Mobile Location Server (SMLC) module in the Xypoint ® Location Platform (XLP) is a standards-based, integrated, and highly scalable solution that supports control plane location technology for GSM and GERAN radio networks. It offers location fix methods of Cell-ID and Cell ID plus Timing Advance for increased accuracy.

Serving Mobile Location Center (SMLC) was introduced as part of location service architecture in 3GPP. In general, SMLC manages the overall coordination and scheduling of resources required to perform positioning of a mobile, and calculates the final location estimate and accuracy.

TCS’ Xypoint SMLC product supports the following functionality in GSM and GERAN radio networks:

• Calculates location estimates based cell information and TA value.
• Translates network identities to location estimates.
• Communication with BSS via “Lb” interface.

The XLP-SMLC can provide coarse (Cell-ID) or better-than-coarse (Cell-ID plus Timing Advance) positioning methods. It is therefore well suited to provide location services that do not require high precision, like weather, traffic and emergency services. It is especially useful when user-plane solutions like SUPL cannot be used due to the requirement that the service needs to work on all handsets (i.e. no handset dependency).

TCS Xypoint® Location Platform (XLP) infrastructure modules are built to meet high availability guidelines:

• Network: All systems are connected to the operator’s network in a fashion that allows for continued availability when network routes unexpectedly go offline.
• System: All systems are distributed across a series of redundant servers in an “all-hot” availability model, allowing for automatically routing requests to other system components when unexpected problems occur.
• Software: All components are redundant by design, allowing for automatic redistributing traffic to online systems.

This allows a single XLP site to be 99.99% available to operators. Additional sites can be installed and networked together to offer geo-redundancy options and increase availability to 99.999%.

TCS provides in-network, hosted, and hybrid LBS deployment. While the in-network option allows greater control, it requires a capital expenditure for requisite hardware and software as well as for the operating costs associated with non-stop operation, upkeep, and monitoring. By opting for TCS to host, operators remove the capital acquisition costs as well as the operational and logistical burdens associated with hardware and software purchase, installation, scalability, maintenance, and around-the-clock operations.