New Industrial Anchors Release: RTLS Deployment Success That Only Sewio Can Give You

By Petr Passinger | May 31th, 2021 | 4 min read

Your production facility or warehouse is not an open and always-clear space that can be easily covered by uniform signal coverage created by a unified set of anchors. In addition to open spaces, your hall also has obstacles, walls, aisles and corridors and tracked objects come in different shapes and sizes and not always with ideal tag placement.

Unlike other real-time location systems, Sewio now addresses real-life industrial layouts and scenarios with not ideal tag placements by allowing the combination of two industrial ready anchor types in a single deployment, bringing necessary precision while, at the same time, lowering the number of anchors needed, thereby cutting infrastructure costs. Read more about what you can achieve using just Sewio RTLS and its combination of new, fully certified (CE and FCC) industrial anchors.

The Sewio Omni anchor is the latest addition to our hardware portfolio, providing you precision, reliability and lower deployment costs in harsh and vast industrial environments. The IP65 housing, wide temperature operation range and protective vent means the Omni anchor is ready to take on any industrial scenario. The new anchor completes our in-house manufactured Sewio industrial infrastructure portfolio, which comes fully FCC and CE certified with high-grade certification compliance issued by a notified body.

You can now seamlessly combine two anchor types with different antennas in a single indoor tracking deployment, giving you the right mix of directional and omnidirectional coverage to ensure the necessary accuracy while keeping the project costs at a minimum by using fewer anchors and less cabling to connect them.

1. Cutting Deployment Costs by Using Just the Right Number of Anchors

In an ideal open indoor space with no obstacles, walls and aisles, the area could be covered by a grid of omnidirectional antennas with uniform signal coverage. The reality of industrial layouts, however, is anything but. That’s why when it comes to unified and reliable precision across the whole tracked area, you need a combination of omnidirectional and directional antennas (anchors). To find the best combination of anchors your facility layout can be uploaded to RTLS Planner in which you can easily find the optimum anchors distribution. This combination not only ensures the precision needed but saves on the number of anchors and their cabling, achieving the optimum precision/price balance and shortening the project’s payback period.

Combination of Direct and Omni Anchors in a Single Deployment for Best ROI

2. Localization Available – Even for Non-optimal (=Real-life) Tag Placements

The omnidirectional anchors provide stable and precise localization when tracking entities with optimal tag placement (as shown in picture #1). However, in real-life scenarios, tag placement might not always be in the ideal line of sight of the anchors. Only directional antennas, with their focused strong signal coverage, in combination with omnidirectional anchors can handle even the non-optimal tag placement scenarios familiar in real-life industrial environments.

Non-optimal/Optimal Tag Placement in a Combination of Anchor Types Scenario

3. The Flexibility of the Combination of Directional/Omni Anchors Resulting in Lower Cost of Infrastructure Comparing to BLE AoA 

While BLE AoA based indoor tracking solutions require you to only place anchors at ceiling level, due to its inability to resolve signal reflections and non-line of sight (NLOS) scenarios, Sewio UWB-powered RTLS allows anchor installation both horizontally along the walls or vertically on the ceiling.

The overall cost of infrastructure consists of both – number of anchors needed and the service costs to install them. The service costs usually increase with the height the anchors need to be installed. The BLE AoA allows installation only at the ceiling resulting in the highest installation costs (manpower, tooling-high lift platforms, wiring). While UWB anchors allow installation anywhere between 3 -12 m it gives wider options to chose the placement that will be less costly for the installation. It is the flexibility of UWB’s deployment that opens up use cases and drastically cuts down costs.

Flexibility of Deployments: Bluetooth AoA vs. UWB

Both anchors now share the same features:

• Robust IP65 housing (dust/water resistant)
• Wide temperature operation range (-20 °C…+60 °C)
• New protective vent for sustainable performance in harsh conditions
• Advanced, unified and easy-to-mount holders for industrial environments
• Anchors are manufactured solely inhouse in the EU
• Full integration with Sewio’s RTLS Planner
• Certified by FCC and RED/CE with high-grade certification compliance
  • EU Type CERTIFICATE issued by a notified body
  • Per device radio calibration

Read more about UWB anchors or take a deeper look at our Anchor documentation. Still have questions? We are happy to answer them, so don’t hesitate to send us an email.