Get more from your Wi-Fi infrastructure with RTLS efficiencies
 

Issue #179 | Feb. 13, 2009 | by Antti Korhonen

With the economy suffering and enterprises severely curtailing spending, it wouldn’t be unexpected for the deployment of an enterprise-class asset tracking solution to be put on hold indefinitely. But solutions such as real time location systems (RTLS) result in greater cost savings for the organization.

So do you spend to save?

RTLS enables enterprises to improve asset utilization by knowing the exact location of assets and people anywhere within the enterprise campus. This makes it an attractive solution for enterprises such as healthcare, manufacturing and mining. Today there is a wide variety of wireless and RFID-based solutions for real-time tracking.

How do you choose?

The answer to this question boils down to Business 101: a simple cost-performance analysis. Essentially, an enterprise must consider the system’s performance and ability to track its assets, inventory and/or staff, for a certain price and with a reasonable return on investment (ROI).

Cost-performance analysis begins with realistic accuracy needs

The buyer must understand what level of tracking accuracy to solve their asset management problem is “adequate." If accuracy was “free of charge,” every enterprise would expect their solution to track locations down to the millimeter. But, accuracy is not free.

Beyond a certain level of accepted performance, additional accuracy comes with a high price tag. While accuracy is important, it must fit the situation. Six-inch accuracy is achievable, but unnecessary when tracking medical equipment in a hospital, where room-level accuracy is acceptable. Most indoor tracking installations therefore gravitate towards solutions that provide one to five meter accuracy.

On the other hand, process automation applications – such as capturing patient-physician transactions for billing purposes – could benefit from accuracy better than one meter. But the buyer interested in this type of application must budget accordingly. Does the difference between one meter and, say, three meters matter if both locations are in the same room?

Enterprises also must consider the underlying infrastructure as part of the cost of a RTLS system. Many tracking systems that are based on UWB, Zigbee, ultrasound and various other RFID solutions require a secondary network. Each can be beneficial for various technological uses; but as opposed to Wi-Fi-based RTLS, additional infrastructure and maintenance costs must be figured.

Leveraging Wi-Fi for RTLS

It is possible to eliminate a secondary network as a hurdle for RTLS deployment since most enterprises already have Wi-Fi networks in place. Wi-Fi infrastructure is flexible enough to support new applications such as RTLS, and in many cases requires no additional components to act as a competent backbone for accurate tracking.

Enterprises can leverage their existing Wi-Fi infrastructure to achieve one to five meter accuracy, while not impacting the performance of voice or data applications running on the network. Wi-Fi RTLS leverages the same procedures, protocols, RF planning, networking and security with which the enterprise IT department is already familiar. As a result, Wi-Fi-based RTLS can easily meet mainstream needs for asset tracking.

Important to note is that not all Wi-Fi-based RTLS systems are created equal. They come with varying performance levels, dependent on the quality of the tracking algorithms in the system’s software. For example, some of the Wi-Fi RTLS solutions can only provide a precision of a larger zone, and require additional reader gates and chokepoints to capture room level resolution. However other systems can pinpoint the right room without any additional hardware.

Buyers should always look at multiple vendors and request a live on-site demonstration to evaluate performance before the final investment decision. Because standards-based Wi-Fi tracking systems can run over any brand or generation of Wi-Fi network, they are incredibly easy to evaluate without a major installation project.

It is not just hospitals that are realizing the benefits of Wi-Fi based location services and innovative network planning and optimization tools. At Ekahau, we are proud our solutions are being used in more than 150 hospitals around the world; but we also see Wi-Fi RTLS used successfully by manufacturers, mining/oil/gas companies, government agencies and the military. Wireless software developers and leading system integrators, who market and install wireless enterprise applications, are finding success for their customers.

Wi-Fi-based RTLS offers enterprise a wise way to maximize their limited technology budgets and achieve a significant ROI. Wi-Fi-based RTLS is capable of meeting most of enterprise tracking needs today and well into the future, in a cost effective way that does not require major network infrastructure deployments. By leveraging the networks they already own, enterprises can quickly, easily and inexpensively deploy the tracking solutions they need.

Antti Korhonen, is president and CEO of Ekahau, a U.S. based Wi-Fi asset tracking solutions company, with offices in Saratoga, Calif.; Reston, Va.; Helsinki, Finland; and Hong Kong. Ekahau - Home