Feature -- by Mark Sproxton

Seated at a table full of media from throughout North America, the president and CEO of Calgary's Cell-Loc Inc. sits intently watching the launch of a spinoff venture using the company's location technology. While Cell-Loc's executive vice president fields most of the questions, Michel Fattouche also offers some additional information on the wireless locating technology that first started as a university research project.

Cell-Loc's Lew Turnquist demonstrates the workings of a wireless location tracking system.

Eleven years ago, while teaching electrical engineering at the University of Calgary, Fattouche was approached by a student wanting to use communication technology "to help people." Used to tackling more theoretical problems, the professor put in much thought coming up with a project for this student to work on. "I started to think about something that could save lives, and started focussing on locating devices," Fattouche explained. "In time, we realized it was a good project."

With the seed being planted, the professor and his electrical engineering students began examining different types of technological applications that could be used to help locate people in trouble. After years of work, and the formation of the private Cell-Loc company, the light at the end of the tunnel is beginning to shine. Initially, much of the work was geared to develop a system able to locate 911 calls made from cell phones. Knowing the U.S. communications regulating authority was calling for this locating service to be mandatory, Cell-Loc developed a wireless network and devices that can trace calls to a specific location.

Now the Calgary company is expanding its technological applications to include fleet tracking, child tracking, and even pet tracking. Cell-Loc's spinoff company, TimesThree, operates a system in Calgary providing "location sensitive services." For example, by using its services, someone can pick up a cell phone and call a local operator and ask the whereabouts of the nearest pizza joint. The technology allows the operator to know where the caller is located, and then relay the required information. TimesThree is in the early stages of setting up this system across the U.S.

The 11 years to operation included six years of research and five years of development, which included one year to design and build a network capable of utilizing the technology. The technology included the development of a box to house the hardware, software, and determining where and how many towers are needed for the system to operate.

Working in teams, all types of engineers, such as radio frequency, hardware, electrical and computer, computer scientists, technicians and technologists combined their skills to come up answers to the question of how best to develop the equipment that will most cost-effectively allow the locating technology to work. This approach is used because as a company official said: "We're very team oriented here. No one person has all the good ideas."

As with most any question, there's more than one answer that can be satisfactorily put forward. So, with the question posed, a few teams spent time looking at radio frequency hardware, microprocessors and firmware (a sort of software used to read incoming messages). For example, using programs like C++ and CORBA, radio frequency engineers and hardware engineers designed the hardware to use radio frequencies to receive signals, and digital connections to process those signals. From there, electrical and computer engineers worked along with computer scientists to develop the software allowing the devices to communicate easily.

Each team evaluated its workings, and the work of the other teams, by examining performance, projected development costs, and projected production costs. Within the overall evaluation, each specialty would look at each proposal and come up with a time and cost analysis of their area of expertise. Once the development plan was set, and a team put in place, it worked on details such as: determining which components are required; how best to design them; the best circuit board layouts; and testing procedures. With those devices manufactured, the technology is on the market and Cell Loc is recognized as a leader in this type of wireless communication.