Long-Range BLE Transmits at 20 Miles

By Claire Swedberg

Apptricity says its new Bluetooth Low Energy technology can provide location data for tracking individuals and things in wide spaces or very large buildings, without the high cost of installing numerous readers or using satellite or cellular devices.

Technology company Apptricity has released a new long-range Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacon device that it says can transmit at a distance of 20 miles to receivers such as the company's edge devices, or to mobile phones. The technology enables the firm to provide solutions for locating people, assets and inventory, often in wide areas such as construction sites or storage yards, or across hospitals or other large buildings. Apptricity says that while it calls the product the 20 Mile Ultra Long-Range Bluetooth beacon, the unit transmitted a signal more than 28 miles during testing.

The Texas-based company's Development Group designed the new beacon as a long-range alternative to Internet of Things (IoT) technologies such as RFID and standard BLE, at a cost less than that of satellite or cellular systems. The new product, which works with Apptricity's I-Connect edge devices and cloud-based software, is available now for preordering and is expected to be delivered later this summer. The long-range beacon has been tested by a silver mining company, as well as by the U.S. military.

The 20 Mile Ultra Long-Range Bluetooth beacon

With regard to mining, the beacons were used to track individuals and vehicles throughout a mining operation for safety purposes, says Tim Garcia, Apptricity's CEO. Meanwhile, he adds, the military has tested the technology to track assets. The 20-year-old software and IoT company offers three cloud-based solution lines for enterprise asset management, inventory management and field services. Its customers include government agencies, retail companies, the industrial market (such as construction, mining, aviation and energy) and healthcare organizations.

Apptricity's solutions employ IoT technology to track the locations and statuses of inventory, assets and workers. The software is used with passive RFID, cellular and satellite systems, and GPS mapping, depending on an application's particular needs. Its solutions are currently in use by one of the largest U.S. mobile carriers to manage data, such as what is in its service vehicles as personnel service customers—as well as, more recently, bringing visibility into what is onsite and on display at thousands of the mobile carrier's retail sites.

When it comes to the transmission technology, Garcia says, there has been room for improvement in some applications. For instance, Apptricity met with a beverage company customer that required long-range reads of items within a wide space. Additionally, the firm found construction companies also needed a longer transmission in large worksites or laydown yards, without having to deploy high-cost satellite or LTE and GPS units.

Traditional Bluetooth has transmission limitations, as transmission distance between beacons is measured by feet rather than miles. Active RFID also has transmission limits. The company provides RFID and other IoT-based technologies, but it found shortcomings with the systems available for some use cases. Therefore, Garcia says, employing off-the-shelf technology does not always meet the needs of its customers. "For the hard stuff," he states, "we develop [it] ourselves."

The company began developing a transmitting device that would leverage the features of BLE 5.0 to locate people or things at a distance. Bluetooth 5.0 features four times the range of previous Bluetooth standards, at twice the speed and eight times the data capacity, according to the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) at the time of the standard's 2016 release. "Then we took it a little bit further," Garcia says, by making the beacon operable as part of an indoor positioning system. That means the beacon can transmit its location inside hospitals or other large buildings.

Garcia cites a use case in which medical equipment suppliers that visit hospitals to service products (ventilators, for example) can benefit from an automated solution that quickly locates equipment requiring calibration or maintenance. Users could simply open the Apptricity app on their phone, which could then capture the locations of tagged items. Alternatively, if I-Connect edge devices are installed at the hospital, more granular data could be captured via those devices, which would then forward the collected location data to the software and app.

The new Bluetooth beacon measures approximately 1.5 inches by 3 inches and comes with two replaceable AA batteries. Users can employ the Apptricity software to set individual characteristics, such as how often the device beacons, according to the application. There is also a shorter-range beacon that transmits at a distance of 4 to 12 miles, and that version can be powered via a button-style battery. The software displays the life remaining in the batteries, and users can set the system to provide alerting, messaging and geofencing. The edge devices receive the beacon transmission up to 20 miles away and can also receive RFID transmissions.

The long-range transmission functionality is accomplished through what Garcia calls precise tuning of the Bluetooth signal. The system can transmit a building's floors, as well as in challenging environments such as in underground mines. The software leverages the received signal strength, along with the GPS data, and can thus identify the beacon's location. If users require precise location data, however, such as confirming in which room a beacon is located inside a large building, then multiple edge devices can be installed and the software can identify location based on triangulation.

Because the edge device also captures data via RFID, users can leverage a hybrid solution by monitoring the locations of lower-value items with low-cost RFID tags, and higher-value or more mobile items via the beacons. For example, beacons could be applied to vehicles at a construction site, while tools or lower-value items could be tagged and tracked using RFID. The edge device can then forward the data it captures via cellular, Wi-Fi or satellite connectivity.

To date, Garcia says, several businesses have been testing the technology. A mining company has applied the beacons to vehicles in order to track their movements underground and the zones they enter. If an incident occurs, such as a beacon entering an unauthorized zone, the software can send alerts to specified individuals via SMS or e-mail messages. The software enables real-time locating functionality as well. For instance, if a user wants to locate all units of a specific type of inventory, he or she can run a search for those items and view where they are, as well as whether they have moved. That can provide visibility into information such as which products are selling most quickly for large retailers.

With regard to healthcare, the beacons can be attached to high-value assets, such as equipment for which nurses or technicians must often physically search. With Apptricity's app, they can capture location data on their smartphone or leverage the edge device data to find the specific floor and room in which the item is located. "That saves tremendous amounts of time," Garcia explains, while providing location data at a lower cost than some traditional real-time locating system (RTLS) technologies.

The software provides alerting that is programmable to a particular user's needs, and it also enables analytics. "At any given point," Garcia states, "you can say 'Show me this inventory item.'" For retailers, the tags can be applied to such items as electronics or other high-value items in order to identify what is on the shelf, what is in the backroom and where.

If a transmission range greater than 20 miles is required, multiple edge devices can act as repeaters. "You're literally creating a mesh network," Garcia says. A larger number of edge devices can provide more specific location data by triangulating the transmission data. "It's really up to what the configuration is and what you need." A smartphone can also act as the receiver, capturing and managing the data via the Apptricity app. Already, Garcia reports, the I-Connect edge devices are being used in both fixed and mobile environments. "The unique thing about this technology," he says, "is that if a vehicle has an edge device in it, goods in that vehicle can be tracked in real time."

For instance, Verizon currently uses Apptricity's solution, with RFID tags and the iConnect device, to track the assets and inventory in each vehicle. A driver can use an app throughout his or her workday to view a work order at each customer site and identify which items are required for that job. He or she can then remove those items from the vehicle, and the software will document what has been removed. With the long-range BLE functionality, Garcia explains, the devices will now be able to capture the locations of tagged items at a much longer range.