LOST - Essensium's Real Time Location System
The LOST technology is capable of offering sub-meter accuracy in indoor and outdoor environments and can maintain this accuracy over hundreds of meters.
The LOST RTLS system requires at least four LOST Reference Nodes with fixed positions and several LOST Mobile Nodes of which the positions are tracked. Between each of the LOST Mobile Nodes and the LOST Reference Nodes a LOST radio signal is sent forward and back to obtain the distance to the LOST Mobile Node. The LOST technology measures the time-of-flight of the radio signal. The LOST Reference Nodes can use a wireless 802.15.4 interface or Ethernet to communicate the distances to the LOST Tracker Server. The LOST Tracker Server converts the distance measurements to positions. The LOST Tracker Server also manages the RTLS network and provides access from the customer's application to the database where the coordinates of the locations are stored.
One of the main applications of the LOST RTLS system is the indoor and outdoor real-time tracking of vehicles. To cover very wide areas, the reach of the LOST RTLS system can be easily expanded by adding more sets of LOST Reference Nodes. Mobile equipment such as trucks, trailers, bulldozers and straddle carriers can be tracked without having to introduce constraining gates or other expensive infrastructure based on RFID. The same system can be used to track large crates, containers or pallets.
