Ceepackaging

Technology

Very strong growth forecast for Real Time Locating Systems

Early success

In the previous decade, the subject had taken off with rapid adoption in heavy logistics. Leader WhereNet made excellent profits and was latterly acquired by the $1 billion Zebra Technologies also of the USA. Its proprietary system became the basis of an ISO open standard. At the same time RTLS proved very popular in US Hospitals in particular for tracking both staff and assets driven by the fear of lawsuits for negligence and the theft or misplacement of up to 5% assets every year. Overstocking of mission critical devices such as defibrillators could be avoided when they could be found instantly when they were needed. Baby theft could be eliminated and many other benefits accrued. However, no one technology was dominant, with WiFi (partly using existing infrastructure with radio fingerprinting) being popular thanks to companies such as AeroScout and Ekahau. Add UHF and 2.4 GHz systems from Awarepoint, GE healthcare selling the products of two developers and many others and alternative, non-RFID options such Sonitor ultrasound where only the room needs to be identified. There have even been some multiple technologies such as infrared with RFID. Awarepoint real-time awareness solutions are now at work in over 150 facilities supporting and serving nearly two million high acuity patients each year.

New waves of market penetration

By contrast, 2011 saw somewhat slower growth of RTLS in heavy logistics and healthcare, the ongoing recession-proof growth of this embryonic market being created by a wide variety of newer applications notably in oil and gas, mining, aerospace and manufacturing. This was much more than diversification of existing technologies into new industries and sectors however. For example, in January 2011, Essensium signed a contract with Flightcare and POM Vlaams-Brabant to track and trace vehicles at Brussels National Airport using its “wide over narrow band” RTLS. By September 2011, Dundee Precious Metals Inc. (TSX: DPM) had implemented AeroScout’s Wi-Fi RFID for tracking people, equipment and vehicles in Chelopech mine in Bulgaria. Worker safety and productivity are improved both on the surface and underground.

UWB comes to the fore

The very technology was changing too. For example, Ultra Wide Band (UWB), whether using Time of Arrival, Time Difference of Arrival or Angle of Arrival or combinations of these now gives superlative tolerance of electromagnetic interference, proximate metal and water and accuracy at a not too high price. Ubisense of Cambridge in the UK, now specialising in UWB RTLS for manufacturing in the main, graduated from earlier start up to a successful stock market flotation in 2011. Trading was at £2.20 a share, up almost a quarter on the IPO price and giving the company a market capital of over £47million. Ubisense has big plans for its RTLS, which company CEO, Richard Green, believes could be as big as GPS (he calls it indoor GPS). He wants Ubisense to become Cambridge’s next £1 billion company.
Zebra Technologies had earlier acquired Multispectral Solutions, the UWB RTLS supplier that won the bidding for people location in the challenging environment of the BP Cherry Point refinery in New York. Thus a frequency band that had been forbidden has become the basis of one of the most popular forms of RTLS.

New forms of WiFi RTLS

Things also changed with WiFi RTLS. Here Ekahau of Finland now claims “hundreds of satisfied customers”. In 2011, at the IDTechEx “Energy Harvesting, RTLS & WSN” event in Munich, Samsung revealed a completely new approach seeking to save the cost of Wi-Fi AP database management by sharing each service provider’s AP DB. It expands the Wi-Fi AP DB (WiFi application database) coverage consistently by importing other service provider’s AP DB and saves on the cost of regular Wi-Fi AP DB update by using AP DB synchronisation between service providers. In particular, this approach enables indoor/outdoor seamless location tracking and service globally using shared Wi-Fi AP DB, claims the company, and installations in a Korean healthcare facility and residential building and in logistics in Singapore were described. In the previous decade, Samsung had been little known in the RTLS business.

ZigBee derivative

On the other hand, DecaWave technology from Ireland was shown to enable precise location systems and wireless sensing networks through the IEEE 802.15.4a standard. That means the location of objects anywhere to a precision of 10cm with a range of up to 450m using its chips which are five times lower in power than 802.15.4 ZigBee transceivers. Indeed, they are likely to be much lower in cost, size and power than other potential 802.15.4a offerings. Over 45 evaluation kits were delivered by year end.

WSN starts to give position

RTLS is only rarely based on ultrasound or infrared, so it is popularly called second generation active RFID. Third generation active RFID is focused on sensors in mesh networks where the small device doing the sensing is called a node. It functions as both an RFID tag and a reader in this self-healing, self-organising network rather like the Internet. However, the last year has seen commercially viable forms of WSN where the position of the node can be known fairly accurately, thus providing competition for traditional RTLS where positional information is the prime objective, not sensing.

Winners and losers

The crudest form of RTLS failed to gain market share. This is the so-called Cell ID or Zonal RTLS, where little more than, “It came within reader range so I know where it is” is all that is on offer. However, 2011 saw better solutions for such applications as heavy logistics in the form of combined systems usually involving GPS with GSM or other options. In September 2011, Ubisense announced the acquisition of InMaps (Integrated Mapping Services), providing further traction in the US geospatial market. It complements Ubisense work in geospatial as it provides an operational support system for GE services. InMaps specialises in services for electric and gas utilities, providing a suite of products which integrate with GPS and geospatial products.
Indeed, in the same city of Cambridge UK, in November 2011, Cambridge Silicon Radio unveiled capability which may feed back into RTLS technology. Instead of relying solely on GPS to determine position, the “SiRFstarV” architecture gathers real-time information from GPS, Galileo, Glonass and Compass (when operational) satellites, multiple radio systems, such as cellular and Wi-Fi, and multiple MEMS sensors, like accelerometers, gyros and compasses. It then combines this real-time information with ephemeris data, mapping, cellular base station and Wi-Fi access point database information. Multiple technologies had reached a new level of virtuosity. Clearly with the burgeoning territorial and technological coverage described and multiple paybacks in more and more industries, the RTLS industry is set for further healthy progress in 2012.