French firm Kerlink has launched LoRaWan-based tracking for smart-retail and smart-facility applications. The real-time, indoor asset-tracking-and-counting system uses wifi or Bluetooth Low Energy.

Called Wanesy Wave, it is an indoor anchor that can detect and locate wifi devices such as smartphones, using their probe request – when the smartphone automatically requests a new wifi service to connect – and can track Bluetooth-enabled devices or tags.

Once detected, it then transmits the data using a LoRaWan link to an industrial-grade LoRaWan gateway, such as a Kerlink Wirnet iFemtoCell. The gateway then transfers the information to any business-application server via the Wanesy management centre, which operates and manages the end-to-end LoRaWans.

This anchor can be used in end-to-end applications to help retail shops, commercial malls or museums count visitors, trace their movements and retrieve their customer journeys in stores and buildings, including the amount of time they spend in different areas, such as in front of product displays or masterpieces.

Deployed across factories, warehouses and service buildings such as hospitals, the system also helps improve management-and-operation efficiency by inexpensively enabling real-time location of devices, by tracking use of assets over a period of time or by getting instant inventory of tools or equipment in a given area.

Wanesy Wave also powers social-contact-tracing information to help to suppress the spread of Covid-19.

Combining wifi, BLE and LoRa for tracking and tracing provides relevant accuracy in an extended indoor range, a combination of area detection and various types of targets – fixed or mobile assets, people – and low energy consumption ensuring extended lifetime for battery-powered devices and tags.

The technology complements Kerlink’s existing Wanesy Geolocation outdoor asset tracking, which allows asset locating and monitoring across large areas. That system is based on time-stamped signals from three or more LoRaWan gateways.

“Wanesy Wave is the right set up for retail, industry, services and leisure verticals that want to quickly leverage a track-and-trace, industrial-grade solution to improve their operations,” said Kerlink product manager Guillaume Boisgontier. “Merchants and other small businesses can easily deploy this indoor and very low-energy tracking to better understand customer behaviour, measure the effectiveness of displays and marketing campaigns, and manage inventory. Industrial sites and hospitals can quickly deploy a solution to geolocate and manage their critical assets to save time and reach a high level of efficiency. This product also underscores Kerlink’s expertise and continuing success at enabling innovative, essential IoT connectivity benefits for a variety of verticals and sectors.”

Based in France, with subsidiaries in the USA, Singapore, India and Japan, Kerlink is a founding and board member of the LoRa Alliance.