Swiss startup LORIOT has partnered with France’s Kerlink to offer an internet of things (IoT) geolocation service in over 130 countries.
Headquartered in Zurich, LORIOT has provided LoRa-based low-power, wide-area (LPWA) network-server solutions in partnership with national and international IoT companies.
The Kerlink Group provides infrastructure and value-added services for the internet of things (IoT) networks. Its Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) Wanesy Geolocation technology allows precise location of end-devices without GPS.
Under the agreement of the two companies, LORIOT will be able to offer Wanesy as a remotely installed value-added services add-on.
“Kerlink’s geolocation capability is a significant addition to our portfolio of third-party, out-of-box, IoT services,” said Julian Studer, CFO and co-founder of LORIOT. “Delivered remotely, through our existing distributed-server infrastructure, Kerlink’s geolocation technology is a vital and cost-saving add-on for our customers around the world.”
LoRaWAN is a standard for wireless communication which allows IoT devices to communicate over large distances with minimal battery usage.
LoRaWAN networks use trilateration, a process of determining absolute or relative locations of points by measurement of distances, using the geometry of circles, spheres or triangles to geolocate end-devices. It relies on three or more access gateways receiving signals (or frames) from a LoRaWAN end-device.
Each payload received is precisely time stamped on reception by the gateway and all carrier-grade LoRaWAN stations’ internal clocks are highly synchronized to optimize the stamp accuracy.
Using the exact position of each network access gateway and the nanosecond differences between signal receptions, the time difference of arrival (TDoA), an expert algorithm can precisely calculate the location of a LoRaWAN end-device.
“This innovative technology can locate static or mobile end-devices indoors or outside without a dedicated infrastructure or the high energy consumption required by satellite-based GPS. This makes it well suited for many use cases that call for cost-efficient operation and long battery life,” said Didier Larrieu, vice president of Kerlink’s Advanced Services business unit.
Among the many common use cases for Kerlink’s geolocation solution include asset tracking and security in harbors, airports and industrial sites, livestock tracking, and safety, construction-site monitoring, and warehouse pallet identification.
