The metaverse is coming. If the hyped forecasts of futurists are to be believed, we’ll soon spend much of our lives in an online virtual world—comprising AR/VR, holographic avatars, video and more—moving effortlessly across vast and imagined geographies.
But for now, the physical realm remains at the forefront of our attention as we seek to marshal the planet’s natural resources and manufactured products in a sustainable way. Ensuring sustainability lies in large part in understanding how many resources are available, how we’re using them and, crucially, where they’re located.
Addressing the last question has been a key driver behind the development of location technologies such as GNSS, which not only guides the layperson around their city but is increasingly being used to track the location of valuable commodities. The downside is that GNSS quickly drains batteries and relies on direct line-of-sight to the satellites.
Now, advancements in cellular technology, the IoT and the Cloud promise to complement GNSS and make ‘location services’ viable for an even larger set of asset tracking applications and make its benefits more accessible to a much broader spectrum of industries and organizations. In short, we are beginning to see the democratization of location intelligence.
The logistics industry in particular stands out as an arena in which better and greater use of location information is now being embraced, and where its application will have marked effects. Global supply chains are the critical arteries that connect and sustain the international economy. Fresh produce, household consumer goods, heavy machinery and medical supplies are just a tiny sample of the vital items that criss-cross the globe daily, using a complex network of shipping routes, national highways and airspace.
SUPPLY CHAIN VISIBILITY
As critical as this global operation is, it is plagued with issues. Some estimates suggest companies lose $2.4 billion annually to damage or loss of cargo at sea and more than $30 billion to theft. To illustrate this point further, in one of the worst cargo losses in history, 520 containers were lost overboard and 250 units were damaged by a Danish container ship traveling between the Netherlands and Sri Lanka in 2014. In a similar vein, more than a fifth of items returned to retail giant Amazon are because they arrived damaged, according to Forrester Research.
Given these figures, it’s no surprise logistics firms and their customers want better supply chain visibility. An absence of data—on the whereabouts of assets and the conditions they encounter—creates sizeable blackspots that hinders the ability to detect and mitigate potential issues.
Asset tracking provides the answer. The technology monitors physical assets—be it shipping containers, pallets, or parcels—as they move from location to location. Tracking can be useful when the goods are in transit, or even when they are stationary at a site or facility. With a clearer and continuous view of the location of their assets, logistics companies can more efficiently manage their supply chains and more rapidly respond to issues and incidents. In fact, logistics giants contend that the use of asset tracking solutions in the global logistics sector could create $1.9 trillion of economic value. Beyond the sizeable financial benefits, asset tracking can also help companies meet the expectations of regulators, who increasingly seek to oversee shipping activity, and customers, who expect to receive accurate delivery information about their important goods.
The recent global supply chain crisis that continues to cause widespread shortages and delays has only made the need for asset tracking more pronounced. Disruptions due to the pandemic and transport labor shortages were among a number of factors that caused havoc with global supply chains. Over many years, these networks had been so heavily optimized that they were unable to cope with unplanned shocks – such as a shortage of shipping containers.
“The same consultants who promoted the virtues of lean inventories now evangelize about supply chain resilience,” wrote the New York Times recently. Operators now face a conundrum to “make their supply chains more resilient without weakening their competitiveness”, says the Harvard Business Review.
Striking a better balance between ruthless efficiency and ensuring sufficient contingencies exist for unplanned shocks will arguably require logistics companies to have a clearer and more granular understanding of the movement of assets within their supply chains. In short, it will require better asset tracking.
LOCATION TECHNOLOGY
Ultimately, any asset or object considered valuable enough by its owner can theoretically be tracked, potentially opening the benefits of asset tracking beyond the optimization of supply chains. Clayton Hine, Business Development Manager at wireless IoT chipmaker Nordic Semiconductor, notes that providers in healthcare settings are already tracking critical medical equipment such as ventilators and beds to prevent valuable time and energy being expended searching for them. In construction and manufacturing, companies can track use of equipment and time spent at certain locations, allowing them to better understand how resources are used and how to optimize for future projects. Animal tracking similarly supports farmers to better manage their herds. Hine says the use of such tracking devices for domestic pets illustrates the potential of asset tracking for consumers. In that vein, food delivery also presents a compelling consumer use case.
A variety of asset tracking technologies have emerged over the years, but each is not equally suitable in every context. For example, barcodes and RFID have been used for asset tracking in factory and logistics contexts for some time, typically providing the last known location of freight items. However, in the case of barcodes, manual scanning is required while the use of RFID typically requires installation of additional infrastructure and only works over very short range. As such, these solutions don’t commonly support real time tracking of assets.
THE POTENTIAL OF GNSS
GNSS is a widely recognized way to obtain accurate and real time location information and is particularly well known in cars, navigation devices and consumer electronics such as smartphones. The potential of GPS is also being exploited in the IoT and asset tracking context. Cube Tracker’s Cube GPS is a prime example. The tracker uses the Nordic nRF9160 cellular IoT SiP’s built-in GNSS capability to monitor and transmit the location of important assets.
But the use of GNSS for determining location involves notable trade-offs, particularly for battery-powered IoT devices that are required to operate over extended time periods in a variety of locations, says Hine. “GNSS can be very accurate for location, but it requires a direct line to multiple satellites—meaning the tracker only works outside—and it consumes enough power to quickly drain a typical asset tracker battery.”
Fortunately, innovations have seen cellular trilateration now being used to determine the location of devices. This, and widespread cellular networks, mean asset tracking is becoming a viable option in a broader variety of contexts. “Cellular infrastructure is already deployed and covers most areas around the globe where assets need to be tracked,” says Hine. “This means without spending any money on [expensive] infrastructure, you can get information about the location of an item almost anywhere.”
Hine adds that cellular standards such as LTE-M and NB- IoT have been specifically developed for applications with lower data and lower power requirements, making longer- lasting battery powered asset trackers a reality. Location services that run over cellular networks also work indoors – another benefit over GNSS.
Cellular IoT asset tracking solutions can also deliver benefits beyond just location tracking. For instance, Norwegian company Meshtech’s environmental asset tracker—based on the Nordic nRF9160—uses the SiP’s built-in sensor support to determine not only the location of shipping consignments, but also to monitor temperature and whether a consignment has been dropped. This is beneficial for fragile or perishable goods such as food or medicines, with an estimated $35 billion lost in waste annually in shipping perishable goods alone.
UP IN THE CLOUD
Cellular IoT appears to be following the arc of technologies such as PCs and smartphones, with the combination of growing sophistication of devices and falling costs fueling rapid uptake. But as companies add more trackable cellular IoT devices into their environments, new challenges emerge – namely, the need to manage a fleet of hundreds or thousands of devices and integrate and interpret the data they produce in quick time. Though some commercial IoT Cloud management solutions can support this, they can be clunky, making it difficult for young companies to integrate these products
with their cellular IoT solutions. In response to this challenge, Nordic Semiconductor recently launched nRF Cloud Location Services. The service is designed to work with Nordic’s cellular IoT solutions such as the nRF9160 and supports simplified configuration, management and maintenance of fleets of cellular IoT devices, says Ville-Veikko Helppi, Product Manager for Cloud Services at the company.
Beyond supporting the management of devices, nRF Cloud Location Services also helps customers select a location service that optimally manages the trade-off between accuracy and power consumption. GNSS—while offering positional precision—consumes significant power, particularly in the ‘time to first fix’ (TTFF) when a GNSS device is searching for satellite signals and navigation data. As a result, it may not be appropriate for devices that need to run on low power for extended periods, such as during long periods of transit.
As an alternative, nRF Cloud Location Services offers single-cell and multi-cell location, which save power by not requiring a GNSS modem. Single-cell uses the nearest cell tower to provide a coarse location of the device, accurate to about a kilometer. “This is ideal where you need to track cargo or a container, but don’t need to know precisely where it is. For instance, if you want to know the cargo is
at Frankfurt airport and about to board the plane for South Africa, but you don’t really need to know exactly which corner of the airport it’s in,” says Helppi. The multi-cell option uses a similar process, but determines location using multiple cell towers instead of one, with accuracy of a few hundred meters and a small power consumption penalty.
EXTENDING BATTERY LIFE
Where customers need more accurate location data than cellular services provide but would like to reduce the power drain of GPS (the U.S. version of GNSS), nRF Cloud Location Services provides support for Assisted GPS and Predicted GPS options that help extend battery life. In Assisted GPS, ‘assistance data’—that helps shorten TTFF and is usually obtained via satellites across a power hungry and slow radio link—is gathered via a fast and efficient cellular connection from a third party provider. This data narrows down the number of satellites a tracker device must look for and predicts their position, shortening the time taken to determine satellite location and thus extending battery life.
Predicted GPS builds on this technique, by using up to two weeks of predicted assistance data instead of just the few hours provided by Assisted GPS. “Consider a ship about to set sail that knows it will be at sea for five days. Using Predicted GPS, [a tracker] can pull down assistance data for those five days, [providing it] predictions about where to look for satellites during the time it is away from cellular networks or the Internet,” says Helppi. By reducing the need to obtain new assistance data, Predicted GPS offers further power savings on Assisted GPS, while still providing precise location information.
The advancement of cellular infrastructure and tech, together with continued maturation of Cloud computing will result in even better location services. For example, Polte’s Cloud Location over Cellular (C-LoC) promises highly accurate and continuous location for cellular devices, even as they roam. Solutions like Polte’s integrate with nRF Cloud Location Services and the nRF9160 SiP, allowing Nordic customers to directly benefit from such advances. Polte has also joined the Nordic Partner Program as a solutions partner, cementing the relationship.
With the criticality of supply chains as demonstrated by recent crises, and the continued intensification of cyber threats, the security of asset tracking solutions is also a priority. In addition to the well-known security of cellular networks, cellular IoT devices such as the nRF9160 provide additional layers of security through the use of Arm’s TrustZone hardware-enforced isolation of critical components. Cloud solutions can add a further layer of security, with nRF Cloud Location Services employing authentication encryption for data that moves between devices and the Cloud. nRF Cloud Location Services simplifies this task with firmware updates over the air which, in addition to the security outcomes, also represents a convenience dividend for customers as the number of devices to manage grows.
LOCATING THE FUTURE
A more secure and integrated ecosystem comprising best-in-class SiPs, high quality cellular networks and the power of the Cloud not only makes location services more accessible, but also brings the opportunity to imagine new ideas and possibilities. For instance, the ability to access Cloud storage may enable users of nRF Cloud Location Services to identify new services and applications, says Helppi. “With cellular IoT combined with the Cloud, the asset tracking device is not the only option for storing data. We can capture more tracking data in Cloud storage, enabling us to view historical information about where an asset was and its condition at a particular moment.” Helppi says this historical information could be useful for use cases such as insurance, investigations or route forecasting and optimization. In a similar way, cellular IoT tracking paired with Cloud location services might more readily enable leasing companies to pursue service based business models, by providing them Cloud based insights on time and distances traveled for leased equipment.
Smarter application of location services could also see the realization of a more automated supply chain. Silicon Valley-based IoTeX’s combination of its Pebble Tracker with blockchain technology offers a glimpse of what’s possible. The tracker uses Nordic’s nRF9160 to send environmental and location data securely to blockchain based backend services and applications, which in turn determine if ‘smart contracts’ have been fulfilled. If an asset is lost or damaged, a blockchain contract can automatically penalize the transport company and compensate the customer.
The advent of Cloud location services is expected to spur more innovative applications like this, not least because companies will be relieved of the burden of managing and integrating their tracker devices. This enables them to focus time and effort on developing new ideas. By accelerating innovation like this, and forecasts by Reuters of 267 billion IoT asset tracking devices deployed by 2027, finding the future may be easier than ever.
