The tracking and indoor positioning space endure the wild west for many industries working towards developing a vigorous, cost-effective, scalable solution. Bluetooth Low Energy, Ultra Wide Band, RFID, WiFi, and Ultrasonic, to name a few, have been utilized in the past to make Indoor Positioning and Asset Tracking solutions. Develop modern generation LoRa Indoor Bluetooth Gateway technologies, we can give a perfect and low-cost wireless location solution for both indoor and outdoor use by merging our LoRa-Based Bluetooth Beacon product, GPS tracker within the location system.
An indoor location system is built by integrating wireless communication, base station, trackers, and other technologies to identify and monitor the position of persons and objects in an indoor space. Standard indoor wireless positioning technologies contain Bluetooth, infrared, WiFi, ultra-wideband, RFID, ultrasound, and geomagnetic. However, it is not absolute for accurate, low-cost, low power, and long-range indoor location systems. According to the use of cases across areas like retail, hospital, and manufacturing, it is clear that the market potential is huge.
What is BLE?
BLE is the low-energy application of Bluetooth. It can be used over a short distance to enable smart devices to communicate. Bluetooth and BLE both work in the same 2.4 GHz ISM band and have a similar virtual range of approximately 330 feet. BLE yet, cannot convey as much data, nor is it as responsive. All these restrictions inflicted on devices operating BLE are how devices can work on a small battery for years. BLE is one of the top-notch for Indoor Bluetooth Gateway and asset tracking, where fewer amounts of data only need to be transferred periodically within a larger coverage area. And also some of the devices you easily interact with every day such as your assist tracker, smartphone, healthcare, beacons, security, smartwatch, wireless headphones, and computer are using BLE to make a seamless experience between your devices.
What is LoRa?
LoRa is one of the best low-power radio systems for wireless data transmission over long distances. Some hardware components SX1276 and SX1262 LoRa chips use is a modulation technique called Chirp Spread Spectrum (CSS) to build up the Physical layer of a LoRa technology stack. When merged with the LoRa communication protocol, devices can achieve long-range, low-power communications.
LoRa and the corresponding wireless radio frequency technology is a long-range, low-power wireless platform that has become the de-facto technology for Internet of Things (IoT) networks worldwide. IoT needs end-to-end security, bi-directional communication, mobility, and localization services. LoRa Bluetooth gateway and the open LoRa protocol allow smart IoT applications that resolve some of the challenges facing our planet: improving asset management efficiency, security management, visitor tracking, environmental parameter monitor (temperature and humidity for example) and more.
How is Bluetooth Low Energy used for Indoor Positioning and Asset Tracking?
Lansitec B-Mobile tracker solution, starts with three parts: tags or beacons, and Bluetooth gateways.
Firstly, the tags are related to the object of interest to track and they broadcast messages.
Secondly, the Bluetooth gateway works as a transmitter and receiver. It receive nearby tags information and then forward that information to the upper level device, i.e. LoRa gateway or the cloud.They examine for tags and measure the strength of the transmission signal from tags.
Lastly, the gateways communicate with LoRa Gateways and pass on the data collected to the cloud. This information is then processed using a position engine form of different algorithms and filters. By all these procedures, you are capable of opening up mobile or web applications to locate your position/assets.
LoRa can be utilized for indoor positioning in the way of LoRa/BLE tags and BLE beacons, such as LoRa tags can send and receive signals. Beacons are small transmitters that only send easy signals to devices in the vicinity. Generally, the beacons are put inside the building and are traced by the LoRa/BLE tags attached to the assets or people. The search data is then sent via LoRa to a special gateway. The information is transferred to the backend. The utilization of LoRa/BLE tags in merge with beacons is suitable for all application scenarios in which only some objects are to be tracked on large areas and indoor navigation might be an interesting additional characteristic.
Key Features of LoRa Bluetooth gateway
- LoRa Alliance certified module: LoRaWan1.02 class B.
- Bluetooth protocol 5.0 that qualified module Integrated antenna for BLE, External antenna for SUB-GHz
- Impart to 10 km / 6 miles radius of network coverage
- Can serve up to 100 nodes
- Support Frequency: all LoRaWAN frequencies, EU868, US915, AS923, etc.
Bluetooth receive duration and LoRa report interval is adjustable to save power and improve experience.
The appearance of a Bluetooth Low Energy and LoRa capable device has been long overdue. It is capable devices that decrease the number of variables which could result in indoor positioning and asset tracking solutions failing. The merge of devices with BLE and LoRa potential allows IoT solution providers to explore new use cases that require larger and deeper coverage areas. The cost has always been an extensive issue for companies deciding whether or not to invest money in an indoor positioning and asset tracking solution and for good reason. Ultimately, why would you spend money on an expensive IoT project without the guarantee of its success and a measurable ROI for your business? That’s why we built a special tracker which switches impulsive from GPS outdoor mode to BLE indoor mode.
LoRa Indoor Bluetooth Gateway has efficient devices that will remarkably drive the price of end-to-end IoT solutions for indoor positioning and asset tracking down making them more accessible. The framework, time, and complexity needed for an installation will significantly decrease leading the way to easier installations. Becoming a large LoRa network all over the world, connectivity will no longer be an issue. Internet of Things solution providers no longer have to give out with IT departments, coverage/connectivity issues, infrastructure changes. The decreasing complexity of setup will enable IoT providers to deploy indoor positioning/asset tracking solutions rapidly and at a cut-throat price.