According to a freshly released study funded by Microsoft, roughly 33 percent of companies utilizing the Internet of Things are using it for tracking their stuff. Quality location data is important for more than tracking misplaced tools; it is also necessary for robotics in manufacturing and in autonomous vehicles, so they can spot nearby humans and avoid them.
The escalating interest in locating things is indicated in updated wireless standards. The Bluetooth Special Interest Group estimates that with the updated 5.1 standard, the wireless technology can now locate devices to within a few inches. Elsewhere, Texas Instruments has built a radar chip using 60-gigahertz signals that can help robots “see” where things are in a factory by bouncing radio waves off its surroundings.
In August, NXP, Bosch, Samsung, and access company Assa Abloy launched the FiRa Consortium to deal with location tracking using ultrawideband radios (FiRa stands for “fine-ranging”). This is not the ultrawideband of almost 20 years ago, which offered superfast wireless data transfers over short distances much like Wi-Fi does today. FiRa uses a wide band of spectrum in the 6- to 9-GHz range and relies on the new IEEE 802.15.4z standard. The base standard is utilized for other IoT network technologies, including Zigbee, Wi-SUN, 6LoWPAN, and Thread radios, but the z formulation is designed specifically for securely ascertaining the location of a device.
FiRa provides location data based on a time-of-flight measurement — the time it takes a quick signal pulse to make a round trip to the device. This is different to Bluetooth’s method, which opens a connection between radios and then broadcasts the location. Charles Dachs, vice chair of the FiRa Consortium and vice president of mobile transactions at NXP, says FiRa’s pulselike data transmissions allow location data to be gleaned for items within 100 to 200 meters of a node without sucking up a lot of power. Time-of-flight measurements allow for additional security, since they make it harder to spoof a location, and they are so accurate, it is plain that a person is right there, not even a few meters away. Also, because the radio transmissions are not constant, it is possible for hundreds of devices to ping a node without overwhelming it. By comparison, Bluetooth nodes can handle only about 50 devices.
FiRa’s location-tracking feature will probably be the application that entices many companies to adopt the standard, but it can do more. The consortium also hopes that automotive companies will use it for firmly unlocking car doors or front doors wirelessly. However, there is a downside: Widespread FiRa use for locks would require either a separate fob or new radios on our smartphones.
It’s far more likely that FiRa will find its future in enterprise and industrial asset tracking. Historically, Bluetooth has struggled in this space because of the limited number of connections that can be made. Other radios have been a bit too niche, or not well designed for enterprise use.
