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Actility S.A.
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  5. Multi-Technology Tracking Solutions ...

Multi-Technology Tracking Solutions Services

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Combining low-power multi-technology trackers with a modular location engine to unlock the value of LPWAN-enabled geolocation. The tracking and logistics market is one of the key drivers of the IoT boom. With millions of containers and pallets traveling around the world, and the exponential increase of the transportation industry in a globalized environment, tracking assets and  goods in a cost efficient way became a key technological challenge. Low power IoT tracking solutions are addressing  this issue  by ensuring low power consumption for maximise battery and minimize operational cost. The Actility ThingPark Location solution combines low power communication using LoRaWAN, with advanced location solving algorithms and low power location technologies using Wifi and GPS with patented optimization for low power IoT constraints.
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High cost

Most trackers are using cellular connectivity today which is expensive, especially in roaming scenarios. Associated to the impact of frequent battery changing or charging, the operational cost is too high for most business cases.

Low battery life

The impact of cellular  connectivity and standard GPS on battery consumption is enormous. Trackers usually last for less than one week in standard location scenarios. This has an impact on the use case and the business case.

Indoor-outdoor continuous coverage

Most assets are crossing various environments: inside warehouses, outdoor on pallets, inside tracks, in shops etc. Standard GPS is not able to work in all environments, making seamless tracking uses difficult to implement.

Tracker hardware

Actility-brand Abeeway develops LoRaWAN based trackers. Embedded with a mix of location technologies such as GPS, LoRaWAN, Low Power GPS, Wifi and Bluetooth allowing to provide location data in all coverage scenarios.

IoT optimised firmware

IoT connectivity is a data-constrained environment. The Abeeway tracker firmware is able to select the best location technology based on the environment, ensuring that battery life is always preserved. This allows Abeeway to propose battery  lives that can last for months and years.

Multi-technology location solver engine

Location solving is a power-hungry feature and is best done on a remote server instead of the tracker hardware. Actility combines LoRaWAN network-based TDoA (Time difference on arrival), GPS, Low-Power assisted GPS, Wifi sniffing and Bluetooth Beacon ID exposition. Using a unique API set, the location data can be easily integrated with third-party business applications.

Key features
  • Tracker for industrial use cases with large battery and industry-level casing
  • Consumer tracker
  • GPS, Wifi and Bluetooth chips
  • LoRaWAN backhaul
  • Additional sensors such as accelerometer and temperature sensor
Key features
  • Ability to solve GPS location locally on the sensor or remotely on distant server for better power consumption
  • Wifi sniffing with ability to send Wifi SSIDs over LoRaWAN to remote wifi location solver
  • Embedded algorithm can switch between location technologies to choose the most adapted one based on context
  • Bluetooth Low Energy beacon ID sniffing and ability to send them over LoRaWAN to BLE location solvers
  • The additional embedded sensors such as the accelerometer allows to customize in real time the behavior of the device. For example, send data only a motion is detected.
Key features
  • LoRaWAN TDoA solver
  • Connection to remote Wifi solvers such as Google or HERE
  • Unique API to expose location data, independently of the location technology used
  • advanced geolocation processing engine to deliver value-added geolocation service (and not only raw geolocation information) : geofencing, matching
  • Keep developing our geolocation algorithm to improve performance and accuracy while preserving sensors battery life : DA-GPS, sensor data-fusion, BLE
Low power GPS allows to drastically reduce location power consumption

With standard GPS approach, the location computing is done on tracker, thus making the device consume high amounts of battery power. With Low Power GPS, the location is computed on a remote server. The tracker sends only raw GPS data to the location server who will combine it with real time satellite position almanach to evaluate position with a similar level of precision.