Updating and querying databases that track mobile units

In this paper, we consider databases representing information about moving objects (e.g., vehicles), particularly their location. We address the problems of updating and querying such databases. Specifically, the update problem is to determine when the location of a moving object in the database (namely its database location) should be updated. We answer this question by proposing an information cost model that captures uncertainty, deviation, and communication. Then we analyze dead-reckoning policies, namely policies that update the database location whenever the distance between the actual location and the database location exceeds a given threshold, x. Dead-reckoning is the prevalent approach in military applications, and our cost model enables us to determine the threshold x. We propose several dead-reckoning policies and we compare their performance by simulation. Then we consider the problem of processing range queries in the database. An example of a range query is 'retrieve the objects that are currently inside a given polygon P'. We propose a probabilistic approach to solve the problem. Namely, the DBMS will answer such a query with a set of objects, each of which is associated with a probability that the object is inside P.