Micro-location solutions.

Micro-location is a rapidly growing, multi-billion-dollar market, covering applications in such diverse industrial markets as manufacturing, healthcare, logistics and security. According to research firm MarketsandMarkets, the micro-location market will grow from US$14.1 billion (ca €12.5b)  in 2019 to US$34.1 billion (ca €30b) by 2024 at a compound annual growth rate of more than 19%. Factors driving this high growth rate include, amongst others, inefficiency of GPS solutions in shielded indoor environments and the increasing importance of asset management across various industries.

Nanotron Technologies GmbH a wholly owned subsidiary of Sensera Limited (ASX: SE1) and location silicon provider >Decawave are shortening time to revenue for micro-location solutions by facilitating the interoperability of tags from different vendors and leveraging field-proven location infrastructure provided by nanotron.

Ciaran Connell Decawave CEO  said: “Decawave and nanotron now make it very simple for customers to scale up their systems whilst still retaining their own tag designs. Nanotron’s infrastructure has been widely-deployed and proven in the field over many years and now, as the baseline software applied to Decawave’s silicon, significantly improves ease of implementation and cuts time to market.”

The Company has put more than 500 micro-location systems into service over the past 3 years with up to 5,000 tags per deployment – most of them running 24/7 in mission-critical applications such as livestock health for dairy farms, and mine safety and productivity in underground mines worldwide. Highly competitive location readers, also known as 'Edge Anchors', bring ease of deployment and scalability to location infrastructure build-outs. Edge Anchors synchronize wirelessly and function based on nanotron’s patented 'Sea of Anchor' time difference of arrival (TDOA) technology, thus eliminating system overhead costs normally associated with existing solutions.

Nanotron’s Edge Anchors using Decawave’s Ultra Wide Band (UWB) transceiver chips are now open for use with any tag device based on the same silicon, thanks to a new communication protocol named 'Blink'. A sample implementation of 'Blink' on one of Decawave’s key products, the DWM1001 module, is publicly available at the Decawave Developer Forum and at nanotron’s website.

Thanks to 'Blink', customers no longer need to deal with the complexity of location infrastructure themselves, yet still retain the ability to build their own optimized tag solution. They now directly benefit from ease of deployment and scalability by being able to build their own solutions with nanotron-provided location infrastructure resulting in lower overall cost and significantly accelerated time to revenue.

Nanotron and Decawave signed an IP License and Co-operation Agreement in July 2018, targeting development of next-generation micro-location technologies. Both companies are expanding their cooperation by jointly promoting system scalability and interoperability between tags from different vendors with nanotron-provided location infrastructure utilizing the 'Blink' protocol. The initiative is aimed at accelerating the adoption of micro-location solutions and significantly increasing the sales volumes of tags and Edge Anchors.

Dr. Jens Albers Nanotron CEO said "By combining any vendor’s tags with nanotron’s Edge Anchors, customers can easily rapidly deploy large systems consisting of thousands of tags. We expect to see these efforts generating significant incremental revenue."

@nanotron_Berlin @Decawave #PAuto 

Proximity detection warning.

Nanotron Technologies GmbH, a wholly owned subsidiary of Sensera Limited, and industrial safety solutions provider Selectronic have announced their first joint product: the PDS2400 Collision Avoidance Solution (CAS) for open-pit mine safety

The PDS2400 is an RF-based proximity detection solution that supports collision awareness and proximity warning between fast moving vehicles, as well as between vehicles and people. Unlike competitor solutions, it provides a turnkey, ready-to-go system, which requires zero calibration before use.

The new solution helps mine operators ensure that they comply with all relevant safety legislation, such as Mine Safety & Health Administration (MSHA) regulations in the USA. The PDS2400 CAS solution includes state-of-the-art vehicle systems with Controller Area Network (CAN) bus-based displays and personnel tags with wireless Qi chargers, and operates for up to 50 hours between charges.

The PDS2400 provides proximity alerts with two viewing options: quad sectors or hex sectors. The standard system provides an accuracy of 1m over long ranges of 100m or more, while an optional dual-mode tag can provide even higher accuracy down to 10cm at short ranges of 10m.

For high reliability, the system provides robust resistance against electromagnetic disturbances, whilst the personnel tag utilises a 'body pervasive' antenna design. There are three adjustable warning zones, and the vehicle system provides 'nuisance alarm suppression' for the driver.

Dr Jens Albers, CEO of nanotron, said: "Selectronic is very well known for its innovative mining safety solutions, and the PDS2400 proximity solution leverages nanotron’s strength in location awareness to bring an entirely new level of accuracy and simplicity to the industry."

Jens Richter, Managing Director of Selectronic, said: "Nanotron’s market-leading expertise in location awareness has enabled us to quickly and economically develop a powerful, robust, industry-grade collision avoidance system."

The PDS2400 uses nanotron’s tag-ready swarm bee products, a family of smart RF modules with ready-made anchors. Swarm bee enables Selectronic to provide a modular solution, with a common pin-out and API, which simplifies development and hardware integration, and thereby greatly reduces time-to-market.

With a coverage range of up to 500m, swarm bee modules can track objects with an accuracy down to 10cm. They provide a power-efficient approach that extends battery life of mobile devices and smoothly scales up and down to meet specific customer requirements.

@nanotron_Berlin #selectronic-funk #Mining