It is rare to find RTLS vendors who elaborate about their location technologies, putting out the real system performance. We decided to change that.
The following article gives a view into the iLocate patented tag positioning offer and technology:
Keeping a maximal level of flexibility, the iLocate™ system enables two levels of tag identification and location. Both location technologies can be combined as needed - over the same or different parts of a warehouse, production line or parking area:
- Maximizing performance, optimizing costs.

From a location perspective, two levels of location may exist in RTLS systems:

1. The “High-Accuracy” or “pin-pointed” asset location: This is the real geographical location of an asset. Due to the nature of the operational environments, it is sometimes possible to have only 1 foot difference between different logical locations – even though 1 foot sounds very little in location accuracy terms; for example, a pallet’s location when positioned indoor, against a wall of a warehouse hangar, would be very different 1 foot away, positioned outdoor, against the hangar’s wall from the outside, in the loading bay area. Same goes to perimeter fences, driving lanes and parking spots. Therefore, pin-pointed, high-accuracy location is defined as the location for which physical and logical locations will always be identical.
2. The “Zone” or “proximity” asset location: This is a statistical set of resulting location coordinates, usually randomly spread across a circular area. The radius representing this circular area stands for the accuracy or the zone size. A 20 feet location accuracy (6m) means that the real geographical location of a tagged asset may be anywhere within a 1256 (117m²) square-foot circular area. This is the common type  

The iLocate’s first tag positioning level is termed “proximity” and is similar in its nature to the traditional RF location method, adding to its (zone) accuracy flexibility and low-cost features.
Tags wake-up from their sleep mode when entering the range of an RF beacon device (a stand-alone RF transmitter). When sensing the beacon signal, the tag announces its own ID to the system, combined with the ID received from the beacon transmitter. By controlling the RF signal level of the beacon units (2m to 100m in range) and the identification of the receiving antennas and transponders, the system is able to determine the tag’s location.
The beacon units are low-cost devices that do not require any infrastructure connectivity, therefore can be easily distributed on and around the facility floor, building accuracy zones as the nature of the area and application demands.

The iLocate’s second level of identification and location is termed “high-precision”. When sub-meter location accuracy is requested by the customer’s application (or when logical location requirements would yield a different logical location across very small geographical distances), the tag switches to optical location mode and performs a high-accuracy location procedure.
The signal is received by an infrastructure of low-cost optical readers mounted above the monitored area and processed by the iLocate server.  

As the iLocate system uses a true 2-way, secured, wireless data communication link between all the tags and the system, location operations can be initiated either by the tag (periodically or by over-the-air programmed events, such as movement) or by the system or user application.
We find this methodology much more flexible and efficient compared with today’s common approach, where tags are simple transmitters, emitting their ID at pre defined (and not changeable remotely) time intervals. Of course, using 2-way communication allows the tags to transmit only when required to, as determind by the customer’s application scenario, thus eliminating the ‘RF-buzz’ created by thousands of tags transmitting almost all the time their ID, as can be found in other RTLS systems in the market today.