Adaptive location constraint processing

An important problem for many location-based applications is the continuous evaluation of proximity relations among moving objects. These relations express whether a given set of objects is in a spatial constellation or in a spatial constellation relative to a given point of demarcation in the environment. We represent proximity relations as location constraints, which resemble standing queries over continuously changing location position information. The challenge lies in the continuous processing of large numbers of location constraints as the location of objects and the constraint load change. In this paper, we propose an adaptive location constraint indexing approach which adapts as the constraint load and movement pattern of the objects change. The approach takes correlations between constraints into account to further reduce processing time. We also introduce a new location update policy that detects constraint matches with fewer location update requests. Our approach stabilizes system performance, avoids oscillation, reduces constraint matching time by 70% for in-memory processing, and reduces secondary storage accesses by 80% for I/O-incurring environments.