Wireless Broadband Alliance & LoRa Alliance
®
Proprietary
Copyright © 2020 Wireless Broadband Alliance & LoRa Alliance
Report Title: Wi-Fi & LoRaWAN
®
Trials
Issue Date: November 2020
Version: Final
11
SMART TRANSPORTATION
INDOOR & OUTDOOR ASSET
TRACKING FOR AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY
Description
The automotive industry uses many expensive
assets that are essential to the production process.
In Venissieux Volvo Trucks factory, hundreds of
special racks are used to carry engines along
the production chain, spreading over 25,000 sq.
meters fully covered by 60 Wi-Fi APs. They can
easily get lost, and a missing rack can block the
entire production chain.
Volvo, Abeeway, Actility and HERE Technologies
collaborated to build the indoor tracking
infrastructure leveraging Wi-Fi fingerprinting
technology and an industrial grade LoRaWAN
network. Abeeway's industrial trackers collect-
ed the Wi-Fi AP information and relayed the
measurements over LoRaWAN for accurate
position determination by HERE. The main
challenges of the project were the usage
conditions (+70°C when racks go through the
painting process) and 5m target location accuracy.
Key Primary Indicators
• Rapid Roll through production process
optimization
• Indoor & outdoor geolocation combined with
Abeeway tracker technology
• Accurate indoor location in a 35,000 sq. m.
facility
• Harsh temperature and RF industrial
conditions where Wi-Fi and LoRaWAN
macro-diversity was key to achieve QoS.
Key Takeaways & Next Steps
• Indoor location leverages existing
Wi-Fi APs
• ThingPark
®
optimized LoRaWAN
®
controller leverages macro-diversity to
provide reliable communication through-
out the factory with few gateways.
• Abeeway trackers' low-power
consumption and motion-optimized
algorithms allows multi-technology
trackers to operate for years.
• BLE beacons can complement the location
infrastructure at strategic points.
See more about this use case
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1TUEzcc5Q0
