Integration of location services in the Open Distributed Office

There has recently been much interest in location systems which enable people and equipment to be tracked as they move within and across buildings. Perhaps the most popular of these is the active badge location system where tracking is done by means of IR communication between badges and a network of stations, but others include system login information, and personal diary systems. In the light of this, we describe a location system which does not rely solely on one specific mechanism, but uses and combines information from as many sources as possible, under the control of a master location system (MLS) which co-ordinates all location systems available within an organisation.