Marketing Versus Reality
Since 1999 there have been a variety of technologies and RTLS solutions that have tried to provide location based accuracy that is reliable. The author here has a large amount of experience with many of these, starting out in 1999-2000, with outdoor location based solutions. For indoor based solutions; it comes down to three areas of focus. Providing the correct accuracy needed for the application, cost effectiveness, and reliability. All current technology offerings, Wi-Fi, UWB, Zigbee, Ultrasound, and IR have not really solved these challenges. A lot of this simply boils down to physics.
Why Standards Drive Adoption
The Wi-Fi revolution started in 1999 with IEEE approving 802.11b. Before that there was 802.11 DS and FH being used in enterprise solutions by a specific company for the use of mobile computing and bar code scanners. The author worked for that company. However, the Wi-Fi revolution did not really start until the Wi-Fi Alliance was formed in 2000. This allowed true interoperability between vendors at the client and access point side. Silicon vendors jumped in, standards kept improving, b, g, n, ac, and all the aspects of improving security and quality of service. The Bluetooth special interest group pretty much is following the same pathway of the Wi-Fi Alliance. The Bluetooth SIG has provided a detailed process and methodology that has driven interoperability and adoption.
How the Smart Phone has changed the paradigm
Previous to the smartphone we had laptops enabled with 802.11 that gave us true mobility away from the desktop. The smartphone while primarily used for 3G/4G connectivity also had 802.11 and Bluetooth as a combination SOC. Bluetooth also migrated from just mice and keyboards to being embedded literally in every vehicle today. This wide spread adoption has not only driven down costs, but driven up user requirements. With millions and millions of smart phones incorporating Bluetooth, it simply has become that standard that we really rely upon today. No smart phone today has Zigbee, UWB, Ultrasound or IR. However smart phones do have NFC.
Enterprise convergence to the cloud
Many applications today have moved to the cloud, the challenge is how do you get that information both in an enterprise way from say a Bluetooth enabled personal area network to that cloud? Today’s enterprise WLAN providers are now incorporating BTLE into their access points. Now the WLAN can be the backhaul to the BTLE PAN or client. Another option is simply to use a M2M IOT device. The author has provided a similar BTLE to WLAN to 4G IOT solution to the cloud. The IOT solution becomes very attractive as it is very cost effective, works, and requires no involvement of the IT organization.
Bluetooth v5.1
Current Bluetooth location based systems use signal strength to estimate distance. The Bluetooth v5.1 specification allows Bluetooth enabled devices to determine the direction of the Bluetooth signal that was transmitted. This new feature offers two different methods to determining the angle that a Bluetooth device is transmitting. These two methods are called Angle of Arrival (AoA) and Angle of Departure (AoD). These techniques require one of the two communicating devices to have an array of multiple antenna with the antenna array included in the receiving device when the AoA method is used and in the transmitting device when using AoD.
The Bluetooth Core Specification v5.1 gives the Bluetooth Low Energy (LE) controller in the receiving device the ability to generate data that can be used to calculate the directional angle of the transmitting device. Direction finding as a part of the v5.1 specification is result of several steps in the Bluetooth roadmap that will enable key enhancements to Bluetooth location services
RSSI (Received Signal Strength Indication) versus (AoA) Angle of Arrival
It is some near….versus it is precisely here.
Integra Systems is working with a technology provider that uses the latest BLE v5.1 specification that can provide accuracy from 0.1-1 meters, real time. A respected company with years of R&D and solutions to back this up.
