Real-time location and communication solution

If you have ever been on a big cruise ship, and have not been able to find someone important, like your wife or child, you can relate to the following situation; She was here just a minute ago, and now she is nowhere to be found! You would like to call her, but of course your mobile phone does not work in the middle of the sea! If you are lucky, she turns up at the cabin or is somewhere you intuited she would be - the gift shop, play room, pool, etc.

“With Ekahau's Wi-Fi based RTLS solution, the location of assets and people within the network's coverage area is automatically updated.”
-Antti Korhonen

But there are times when finding your loved one can be really challenging, especially if you are on board on a very large ship - like the Oasis of the Seas.

Royal Caribbean's Oasis of the Seas is the world's largest passenger ship that was built in Helsinki, Finland, in 2009. The 1,200 foot vessel holds as many as 6,000 passengers and 2,000 crew members. It has 16 passenger decks, a "Central Park" area with boutiques, restaurants and bars, a spa, actual surfing pools and more. It is more than a "ship", it is merely a small city sailing on the sea.

In the unfortunate situation, where a child goes missing on board, the situation typically starts out quietly, but soon escalates into frustration and quickly turns into a full blown panic. At the end, it is not only the parents of the missing child who are running around; it is also the management and the crew members of the ship. After a half an hour of looking for someone, you really start to feel overwhelmed and anxious. Is she even on board?

On your future cruise, however, a helpful technology sets you traveling worry free. In the case of Oasis of the Seas, during 2010, they have been testing a system based on Ekahau RTLS (Real Time Location System), which includes Wi-Fi based RFID tags as badges or wristbands, and an Apple iPhone, which shows each tag's location on its screen displaying a map of the ship. The location information is transmitted to the iPhone via the ship's existing Wi-Fi network access points. The system also enables the iPhone user to send messages and alerts  to those wearing the wristband. 

Location Made Easy - Where GPS does not work

The above, true story about a cruise line is an example of how RTLS works. RTLS provides accurate 1-3 meter location information where GPS satellite positioning does not work: indoors or underground, and  in a cruise ship cabin.

In general, where GPS takes you to a correct street address, the Ekahau RTLS tells you, 3D, on which of the 50 floors and in which room inside that building the person or asset is, real time.

Another example of a current user of RTLS is a large hospital campus. In the USA, an average hospital, uses approximately 10-15 medical equipments for each patient. The total hospital inventory therefore reaches easily 3000-5000 mobile equipments, that need to be found for clinical care, and also need to be maintained periodically to keep them qualified for patient care. But, right now, in which building, floor or room are they ?

Traditional solution to this problem has been, and still is in many hospitals, to purchase more equipment. This creates another problem of excess inventory of medical equipment, and hundreds of thousands of additional capital or leasing costs annually.  

Similar to the cruise line example, Ekahau RTLS solution, based on the existing Wi-Fi network and Wi-Fi asset tags, pinpoints in real-time the exact location of medical equipment, patients or personnel. The Ekahau solution also provides utilization rate reports over time - how many assets we have, and how they are being used?

Ekahau RTLS

With Ekahau's Wi-Fi based RTLS solution, the location of assets and people, within the network's coverage area, is automatically updated and can be synchronized with other systems and personnel that call for the information. Overall, the system at its best, optimizes management of processes by making them visible.  Moreover, the system enables new processes, such as routing security personnel automatically to the location where a tag alarm button was pressed or tamper switch was activated.

Ekahau RTLS also supports two-way communication between the tags and the back-office application. This enables mobile tags to be maintained, configured and upgraded remotely over the air, and it also enables text messaging to Ekahau staff badges, combining communication and location in one product. For example, in an emergency situation, a nurse presses the panic button on the personnel badge, the system sends an alert message to all other team members badge displays to request help to that location.

Easy to Implement

The Ekahau RTLS consists of simple ready-to-use components, which  create the location system. The assets are tagged with small battery powered radio tags, and staff members carry the personnel badge on their neck, while patients and visitors are using a wrist band tag . Asset tags are mounted to devices using double sided tape, Velcro or special mounting brackets designed for the purpose.

The tags use a standard Wi-Fi network for communicating and also for measuring radio signal strengths from Wi-Fi access point to the tag. The measured signal strengths are sent over the network to a server running Ekahau RTLS Controller (ERC) software. The ERC calculates the location estimates of the tags. The location estimates are based on the measured signal strengths reported by the tags. Finally, the location estimates are shown to the user on a floor map or as a list to the user by  Ekahau Vision, a browser based application software.

The Ekahau system is the only Wi-Fi-based system on the market that is capable of providing room-level accuracy using Wi-Fi without deploying proprietary chokepoints or readers, which can cause interference with medical equipment or other network functions. Since Wi-Fi is typically deployed already enterprise wide, Ekahau RTLS can extend location visibility across the entire campus or several campuses without any additional costs.

For more information, please visit www.ekahau.com

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Biography

Antti Korhonen has over 20 years of experience in high tech and IT industries in international sales and marketing leadership and product management. Prior to Ekahau, Antti worked at Vaisala Inc., Boston, MA, USA, as a General Manager of Vaisala's Industrial Business Division for North-America. Prior to Vaisala Antti has worked in several management and leadership positions in companies such as Government Research Institute VTT, Computer 2000, and Western Digital Corporation.