Wireless Tracking Technologies
A wireless tracking system can help to track the number of objects at the different zone. There are many tracking solutions on the market now that offers object tracking for indoor application. These are some of the tracking technologies available today.
- iBeacon
- BLE (Low Energy Bluetooth)
- Active RFID Tags
- UWB beacon (Ultra Wide Band Width)
- Zigbee
- Wifi
Tracking of objects or devices can help automate or improve the efficiency of a business process. The location information captured can also be analysed to provide with further insight to further grow and expand your business.
While there are many benefits to deploying a tracking system for your business operation, there are disadvantages in using these tracking technologies for tracking of a large number of tags.
Disadvantage of the Current Tracking Technologies
The listed tracking technologies are quite advanced in the implementation. They use protocol communication to uniquely identify tags or beacons. For an application that requires a larger quantity of tags (tracking carts or trolleys), these advanced tracking technologies will not be suitable.
Unable to Handle a Larger Quantity of Tags
Expensive Tags
Each tag has a receiver and transmission to communicate with each other. On board the circuit, a microcontroller or data logic is required to process the data from the communication. More components and IC chip is required in order to build a beacon tag.
These technologies might be useful or low quantity tracking of unique objects. For tracking of a large quantity of trolley or carts, these tags are perceived to be more expensive for the value they are adding to the application.
Higher Energy Consumption
More components used can mean a higher energy consumption. The complex communication protocol makes the tag work even more. Given the often limited size of the wireless tag, the tag’s battery would probably drain flat faster.
Slower Response Time
The complex protocol and a large number of tags competing for the communication air time are going to cause more data collision, re-transmission and hence slower response time.
Alternative Tracking Solution (Wireless RF Beacon)
A simple RF beacon is proposed to help track massive mobile objects can be design and implemented.
The beacon uses simple RF pulse to alert the base station. It is a low-cost solution for tracking of a larger quantity of mobile objects like trolleys and carts.
Advantages
- Lower cost of tags.
- Lower energy consumption of tags, longer operating time.
- Handle a larger quantity of tags.
- Provide an estimated quantity of tags within a zone.
- Ability to deploy multiple base station to improve the resolution of the tag tracking.
- Simple technologies, simple to maintain.
Disadvantages
- Unable to uniquely identify the object (cart, trolley).
- Unable to precisely count the number of objects.
- The tags are unable to exchange data with the base station.
Simple Tracking Solution For Massive Mobile Objects
While there are many advanced technologies to perform object localisation, tracking and monitoring, it may not be the best solution for application that does not need the objects to be uniquely identified.
A cost effective wireless RF beacon is proposed to help cater the application of counting the number of objects within a given zone to enhance the productivity and business operation.