High-Density and De-Densified Smart Campus Communications

8RTLSs and Distance Tracking Using Wi‐Fi, Bluetooth, and Cellular Technologies

Building on previous chapters, this chapter focuses on some of the other technical approaches that can be used for Office Social Distancing (OSD) and Office Dynamic Cluster Monitoring And Analysis (ODCMA): it covers Wi‐Fi, Bluetooth® Low Energy (BLE), and also, briefly, cellular systems. See Figure 8.1 for symbology of the key active Real‐Time Location Systems (RTLSs) technologies in commercial use.

8.1 OVERVIEW

As discussed in previous chapters, RTLSs estimate locations of mobile entities (people or objects) wearing or carrying tags within interior zones in buildings such as offices, factories, hospitals, and nursing homes, among others. Many existing RTLSs based on Radio Frequency (RF) signals, such as Wi‐Fi or BLE, are designed to track mobile tags that transmit a radio message to a network of receiving devices such as “gateways,” “bridges,” sensors, emitters, or Wireless Access Points (WAPs), deployed in the zone of interest. See Figures 8.2 and 8.3 for illustrative graphical views of the environment.

Typically, the near‐ubiquitous adoption of Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) as a common network infrastructure enables IT planners to deploy Wi‐Fi‐based localization with few incremental hardware costs. It is assumed in all the Wi‐Fi methods that each occupant does carry a smartphone with Wi‐Fi enabled, or he/she carries a Wi‐Fi‐based tag. The network of gateways customarily makes use of the ...