by Angela Guess
A recent press release reports, “Actility, the industry leader in Low Power Wide Area Networks (LPWAN), today announces the availability of a comprehensive geolocation and tracking solution platform offering breakthrough network-based location capability enabled by LoRaWAN network gateways and infrastructure. The ThingPark Location Service will be available to all IoT solution providers and enterprise developers through a single API in ThingPark X, the company’s data mediation and enrichment platform.”
Actility CEO Mike Mulica commented, “We believe that accurate location capabilities combined with LPWA networks are a game-changer in the logistics sector, delivering increased efficiency in resource and supply chain management, at revolutionary TCO levels much lower than conventional cellular/GPS tracking solutions… Geolocation and tracking could possibly be the biggest use case in the whole of the Internet of Things, based on the amount of interest we’re seeing in our location service portfolio. We are making asset tracking accessible to the global supply chain at very compelling cost and very long battery life for tracked devices, and of course with fine location granularity, all combined into a market-ready package with easy integration into existing enterprise management platforms and network solutions.”
The release goes on, “The system does not rely on dedicated tracking sensors. The signal from any LoRaWAN enabled device in the Port is received by several of the Cisco Interface Modules for LoRaWAN mounted throughout the facility. By precisely measuring the time it takes for that signal to reach each of the modules, the network is able to compute the distance to the device from each gateway and then “triangulate” its position. Since this solution does not require the connected device to be fitted with GPS, and the location calculation is done in the cloud, network-based geolocation carries no power penalty, and the lifetime of the device in the field is unaffected. Trackers capable of up to ten years in the field without maintenance are possible.”
Read more at Business Wire.
Photo credit: Actility