I was in the process of writing more of a white paper than an article on indoor positioning systems when I realized, it was going to take some more research. I am not going to take through all the conclusions that got me here; rather, I will give you a synopsis of the important leaps of logic.
The first step was the dialogue on LinkedIn by Doral O’Sullivan from Boldyn Networks, talking about 5G being a solution for indoor positioning. He pointed out that 5G is improving its precision and that other alternatives were also available including Bluetooth, Ultra-Wideband, Magnetic Positioning, Wi-Fi, and AI/ML. Also thrown into the mix was MIOTY, which has caught on in Europe and I have heard of a company using timing signals from HDTV stations.
Here comes the part that sent me down this rabbit hole. Doral states, “As private 5G network deployments continue growing in industrial settings, 5G has the potential to also be considered for providing indoor positioning. A key benefit expected is combining industrial connectivity requirements with precision positioning over the same infrastructure.
I read this to mean, if you are deploying private networks, the cost to use if for indoor positioning is incremental. Or more directly, private networks for indoor positioning cannot compete with other more economic alternatives, unless there is a need for more accuracy, or the initial expenditure is a given.
The responses from the other members in the dialogue all pointed to the accuracy of their favorite solution.
Then came the one that made the most sense because the premise was that AI tools were going to be able to improve the accuracy by combining the various methods and calculating an improvement in the positioning.
Now here is where skepticism comes into play.
Where are we today in the Industrial Enterprise?
My previous research in the Industrial Enterprise leads me to believe that legacy systems still dominate the market and that ethernet is still king of the hill. This means localized systems, like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, have more of a niche based on circumstances, like a greenfield deployment, or a situation dynamic, like flexibility in layouts or network complexity (too few ways to place the cables).
Now, for those that have been listening to the vision for cellular, you have heard “the grand unifying theory” that all management and security will come under the umbrella of 5G. To be fair there are SIM management systems that are taking in LoRaWAN and other networks into the OSS interfaces for better operations and, of course, billing.
But, once again, there is the assumption that you are already using these systems and the price to bring alternative networks is incremental.
I doubt anyone using LoRaWAN that is not already a cellular network operator is going to want the cost of a SIM management system to impact their LoRaWAN pricing.
But, if you add AI to the mix, all of a sudden you get a different dynamic, because AI is going to be a given. In another thread, discussion about AI startups considered that it’s unclear that the monies put into the companies will have the multiples projected, since many of these systems will be replicated within other AI systems. In other words, there is nothing new that AI can produce that won’t be possible for another AI system to replicate. The end user will gain the benefits of an investment independent of the company that “invented the solution.”
If you go back to the original discussion about indoor positioning, the industrial environment will likely have a number of solutions that already exist that can be utilized to improve accuracy. Now that sounds like a worthy investment, or at least something to expect to see in the near future.
Edited by
Erik Linask
