Electronics Weekly Electronics Design & Components Tech News
Branded ‘u-locate’, “it offers every necessary hardware, software and middleware component for indoor positioning, including support for interoperability with the omlox standard”, according to u-blox. “Based on Bluetooth LE AoA, u-locate delivers positioning accuracy down to 10cm while ensuring extended tag battery life.”
Omlox, owned by Profibus and Profinet International, is an industry standard for gathering location data by various means and sharing that data for asset tracking. For location measurement, it favours the use of UWB (ultra-wide-band), particularly that specified in IEEE 802.15.4z, but allows for other radio systems including Bluetooth AoA, or GNSS for outdoor tracking.
Bluetooth AoA has a single transmitter or transceiver located on the traced asset, and two or more static boxes in known locations (‘anchors’ in u-blox-speak, ‘satellites’ for omlox). With Bluetooth AoA, each of the anchors has multiple receive antennas, and time-of-reception differences are used to calculate angle-of-arrival.
U-locate consists of several parts:
- U-locateHub is Omlox compliant locating and positioning middleware that runs independently of the location technology. “U-locateHub complies with the omlox interoperability standard and its various APIs support integration with multiple vendor solutions,” said u-blox. “By joining omlox, u-blox recognises the importance of promoting global interoperability of positioning solutions.”
- U-locateEngine is an omlox-complaint positioning engine which includes documented APIs for real-time positioning and configuration.
U-locateAnchor is the physical fixed Bluetooth element featuring the company’s 126 x 126mm eight antenna ANT-B10 module (right) in waterproof case. Calculated direction is output via Wi-Fi (2.4 or 5GHz), Ethernet or NFC. Power is needed via PoE or USB-C. The 29.5 x 93.5 mm ANT-B11 is a three antenna alternative (below). Both B10 and B11 run ‘u‑locateEmbed’ AoA software on a built-in NINA-B411 Bluetooth transceiver and output.- U-locateTag is branding for the associated tag.
Aside from the hardware that has to be bought, payment is required to use u-locateHub and u-locateEngine. It is a “service model with subscription pending installation size – the number of tags and anchors and/or the covered area in square metres”, u-blox told Electronics Weekly.
Applications are foreseen in warehousing, manufacturing and healthcare.
Further information:
The omlox website is dominated by thin marketing gruel – this article is fairly useful and this one has a clear table
