High-tech SALOC Real Time Localiztion (RTLS) project started

Enschede 2013-10-07

Project background

Growing complexity of organizations due to e.g. growing complexity of processes, ongoing globalization, higher service standards and higher demands on safety and security result in a growing need for adequate information and requires an increasing levels of coordination. Within this environment, highly innovative Real Time Localization Solutions (RTLS) are able to offer the required high degree of transparency.

RTLS solutions are within the market domains of transport & logistics and safety & security, able to help organizations that rely on high-value tools, e.g. equipment and vehicles. Companies can create significant business benefits and improving the quality of the working environment with real-time visibility into the location, condition and utilization of their resources. Furthermore error-generated process costs are reduced as problems can be identified early on and remedied before damage or loss is incurred. ‘Smart objects’ are able to provide an alert when an unplanned incident occurs, e.g. when an object or person enters or leaves a predefined area, enabling adequate action and reducing impact damage of the incident.

Problem statement and objectives

The RTLS systems that are currently available on the market are based on a variety of RTLS techniques such as RSSI, TDOA, UWB or TOF/TOA. All these techniques have their specific characteristics; in general a more accurate system dramatically increases complexity and costs and reduces scalability of the RTLS system. As a result, no RTLS system has been able to breakthrough in a wider application domain because the existing RTLS systems have some (or many) performance shortcomings and characterize themselves by their high deployment and maintenance costs.

Based on a highly innovative localization technique SALOC has the promise to provide similar results as the best competing wireless localization systems, while reducing the deployment and maintenance costs by a factor five or more.

The objective of this project is to determine whether it is possible to make SALOC technically and commercially feasible in wireless networks considering the theoretical localisation technique and limits imposed by the hardware. Therefore, the goal of this innovation project proposal is to develop a prototype of a revolutionary wireless localisation system.

Approach

This project focuses on developing an RTLS solution based on a highly innovative localization technique named Self Adaptive LOCalisation (hence the projectname: SALOC). This new localisation technique performs a new type of range measurement which we call two-way-collaborate-ranging. This new type range measurement requires 2-w TOF hardware and it combines the advantages of existing localization techniques TDOA and TOF