Well, this is not an impossible task. With a real-time personnel tracking solution that runs on Bluetooth RSSI positioning technology, you can create a safe working environment, where the system triggers alerts if employees get near danger zones. Let’s look at how this system works, the required devices, and its use cases to help you utilize the full capabilities of the tracking solution.
What Is Personnel Tracking System and Working Principles
A personnel tracking system is a relatively simple indoor positioning solution, but the software and hardware must be well-designed to make it work accurately and provide real-time tracking. Its architecture has 4 tiers, which are arranged in this order.
- Personnel tracking tag/beacon
- RLTS (Real-Time Location System) anchors, which are essentially a positioning locator (some also called it as base stations)
- Location engine hosted in a cloud or local server
- IoT application to provide visibility into the location data
Each employee must carry a BLE personnel tracking tag, which is usually a beacon card (I’ll focus on BLE in this case due to its better location determination accuracy and higher data transfer rate benefits than RFID).
These tags broadcast encoded data signals (location blinks) at regular, configured intervals to the RLTS anchors. So the base stations must be positioned strategically around the workspace to ensure the tag is within communication range at all times. Large factory floors might need multiple locator stations for complete coverage.
Once these anchors receive the broadcast signals, they read and timestamp them, then forward them to the location engine. This engine analyzes the location blinks and their attached timestamps, then calculates the beacon positions precisely using RSSI or AoA (depending on the technology implemented by the base stations).
After calculating the location data, positioning engines visualize it through maps or the customized applications developed for the specific IoT use case to provide location data.
Besides AoA and TDoA (UWB), the other popular positioning technology is RSSI. UWB is by far the most accurate, but its refresh rate is lower than that of AoA and the tag’s power consumption and cost are higher.
And even when you compare the precision factor, UWB is accurate to 0.1–0.3m, while AoA is only off by a small margin of 0.2m (0.1–0.5m). So we provide BLE AoA positioning solutions due to these benefits.
Why Use a Personnel Tracking System?
This solution is important because it provides several benefits to both the business and the employees.
Benefits to the Businesses
- Safety Enhancement: The real-time visibility of each person on the factory floor makes it easy to identify, respond to, and prevent threats to worker safety. For instance, it will be easy to spot workers who are moving close to high radiation areas and sound an alarm to move away before exposure. From an economic POV, this safety enhancement prevents hefty compensations due to workplace accidents that can negatively affect cash flows and company reputations.
- Improves Security: Each worker has specific areas that he/she cannot access due to clearance levels. Real-time personnel tracking shows and alerts the relevant personnel when such employees cross these boundaries. The personnel tracking system can also prevent theft by identifying where each one was at a particular time or increasing accountability because everyone knows he/she is being monitored.
- Streamlines Workflow to Enhance Efficiency: The location data can help to reduce manual personnel search times, link siloed processes, and improve operational efficiency by identifying process inefficiencies and bottlenecks using accurate, real-time data.
- Improves Time Management: Employers can use the personnel tracking solution to monitor the time employees spend on tasks and projects for better management and resource allocation. This system can also streamline attendance tracking to manage leave requests, monitor absenteeism, check arrival times, etc., to get an overview of their productivity.
- Enables Data-Driven Decision Making: The wealth of data generated by this system can be analyzed by IoT systems to help top-level managers make informed decisions that drive growth and efficiency.
- Ensures Compliance with Labor Regulations: The system’s overtime, working-hour, and leave-entitlement tracking features ensure businesses remain compliant with labor regulations in their countries or regions, saving on the otherwise hefty non-compliance penalties.
Benefits to the Employees
- Prevents Accidents: Employees go to work to be productive and make money, not to get hurt. Personnel tracking keeps them away from danger zones by raising alarms if one gets close.
- Better Work Environment: With real-time employee monitoring, everyone will be accountable, focused, and productive in the workplace, resulting in a healthy and rewarding work environment. Additionally, requesting leave and time off will be easier, faster, and probably not require physical meetings with managers or HR.
- Provides Legal Evidence: If workplace issues arise due to things like denied overtime wages and theft, the personnel tracking record can act as legal evidence, including in a court of law.
Personnel Tracking Devices
Considering how the personnel tracking system works as explained earlier, this solution has the following building blocks.
Beacons/Tags
These devices can have different forms, such as keyfobs or wristbands, but the most popular one for personnel tracking is the card beacon. An example is the DSBC-230 smart BLE tag, which is based on a Silicon Labs chip and measures only 90 x 55.5 x 7.5mm. It features a 700mAh rechargeable battery that can last up to 60 days.
When in motion, this tag’s broadcast interval is 100ms, which increases to 2000ms when stationary.
Also read:
RLTS Anchors/Base Stations/Positioning Locators
Base stations carry the positioning algorithm and have a receiving antenna array that determines the direction of the signal. The device calculates the pitch and heading angle of the tag’s wireless signal to determine its height. This enables the base station to get a 3D (X, Y, and Z) absolute coordinate.
If using multiple RLTS anchors to cover a large factory floor, the combined power of these locators provides several anchor course angle calculations that enhance the spatial detection accuracy of the BLE tags. You can consider these base stations as the specialized gateways in this personnel tracking IoT architecture because they only handle a specific function.
A notable RLTS anchor to consider for AoA locating is the DSLA-G30W AoA base station that comes as part of this kit.
Edge Computing Gateway Hubs
You won’t be mistaken for considering these as gateways, but they are slightly different from base stations because they are powerful and smart enough to run the positioning engine. So in this personnel tracking solution, these hubs act as local servers to provide positioning engine edge computing, essentially to reduce latency and make the visualized data on the map more real-time.
Devices like the DSGW-290 AI-enabled smart hub come with a positioning engine built in when purchased as part of this kit to provide this function.
What About Software?
If you don’t use the positioning engine as part of the local server, the other option is a cloud server engine (SaaS). You can also use a PaaS to develop or port your preferred positioning engine to a cloud server. We solely focus on the hardware development aspect of this solution, so you can decide which positioning engine to use, including in our smart hub.
The other critical software you should have to sell this solution is the visualization application, which usually presents the data as a map. Most of the computing should be in the positioning engine, so this application gives the relevant authorities eyes into employee movement according to the layout of the business premises in real-time.
It’s just like how mapping applications use GPS data to give our location on a map canvas in smartphone applications. You should develop this or port one that is already built to the phone, tablet, or PC of the person who should have access to this tracking data.
Applications of Personnel Tracking Solutions
The most common applications of personnel tracking systems are in the oil & gas, construction, and manufacturing industries, where they are applicable in the following use cases.
- Safety and exposure awareness because these industries have hazardous work environments
- Employee movement analysis to ensure they remain in their respective work areas
- Work center labor tracking to check which employees report to work and leave at what time
- Log-on and training authentication to ensure only the authorized employees access certain areas to work on specific tasks or access special training (employee identification can be combined with log-on to enable this use case)
- Accounting for employees during emergency procedures or evacuations
- To automate the tally of piece rates per employee
- To automate employee working time and attendance records
FAQs on Personnel Tracking System
What Should I Consider When Choosing a Personnel Tracking Solution?
You should consider the four layers that make this personnel tracking solution work. These are the BLE tag, RLTS anchor (specialized BLE gateway), positioning engine, and application software for location data visualization.
What’s the Difference Between Using RFID, Bluetooth, and GPS Technology in Personnel Tracking Solutions?
The primary difference between the three is their tracking distance. RFID tags have a limited range of a few feet, so RFID personnel tracking systems are not viable. This technology is more suitable for inventory management and tracking supply chains.
On the other hand, GPS is ideal for long-distance human and asset tracking because it uses satellites. So it won’t be highly accurate in tracking personnel in relatively small factory spaces.
BLE hits the sweet spot between these two technologies because it has a longer range than RFID (up to 100 meters) and is more precise because its “satellites”, which are the AoA locators, are mounted directly above the employees on the ceilings. Therefore, their algorithms and antennas are more precise in such small spaces.
What Is Personnel Tracking Software?
Personnel tracking software is a tool that helps management teams manage and track employee movements on the factory floor, as well as their reporting and exit times to give information about absenteeism and automate functions like leave applications.
On the architecture above, this software falls on the application layer, and it can take two forms. Employees can have the version that helps them check their statistics and apply for off times, while managers have an admin version that even has a map canvas of the factory floor to show the location of each employee in real-time.
Dusun IoT only provides the hardware needed for this solution, so this software part is up to you. We encourage customized development but can also recommend some partners like Navigine to help you develop these applications.
Do You Have Construction Personnel Tracking Tags or Beacons?
Yes, we do. We partnered with a personnel tracking solutions provider in Germany in the past who implemented an employee attendance and tracking management solution in several construction sites using our keyfob and card/ID BLE beacons.
Final Words
Personnel tracking systems have several benefits that generally include improving productivity and checking the working time or hours of each employee. But using our hardware for your BLE AoA personnel tracking solution introduces safety and security in the mix, which are important selling points because they benefit both employers and employees.
So you can partner with us and let us handle the hardware part to simplify your work and shorten the time to market for your solution. Contact us to discuss more about your requirements and get the project rolling.
