Audio guides at museums and galleries are old hat, but visitors to London’s
Tate Modern gallery — home to some of
the wildest modern art on the planet — can take advantage of a unique multimedia
guide that uses Wi-Fi-enabled iPAQ PDAs from Hewlett-Packard
to deliver, audio, video and text and graphics content.
What makes the Tate PDA guides truly unique is that they know exactly where
you are in the gallery and will present information relevant to that room. The
system, which won an award for technical innovation in Interactive Entertainment
from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, uses wireless "locationing"
technology from Pittsburgh-based PanGo
Networks.
PanGo hopes location-based applications are the next big thing in Wi-Fi.
"Over the last three to four years, the WLAN infrastructure has reached
critical mass," notes marketing vice president Rick Thompson. "Folks
have deployed their networks, now they’re looking for ways to differentiate
and enhance them."
The PanGo technology is mainly server-based software — there are no wireless-related
hardware components, though there is optional thin-client software. At the heart
of software is a process that creates and stores location "fingerprints"
for specific precise areas in a facility.
The technology works by measuring signal strength from a client device at multiple
access points — not just the one with which it will associate in that location,
but others nearby as well. Algorithms analyze this information to create a data
fingerprint, which is stored in a database.
When a connected device turns on or moves, the PanGo system measures signal
strength data and compares it against the stored fingerprints looking for a
match. "It can be very reliable," Thompson says, "with 100-percent
accuracy down to room-level granularity."
PanGo is focusing for now on three broad application areas: location-based
network access, intelligent information management (e.g. the Tate guide) and
wireless asset tracking. There are lots of others, Thompson says.
"People get very excited about the possibilities of locationing,"
he says. "But we’re trying to take this from a market-driven perspective.
These applications respond to real needs in the marketplace right now."
Location based network access is a good example. The problem: students sit
in classrooms surfing the Web over campus Wi-Fi networks instead of listening
to the professor. PanGo’s location based access system allows network admins
to change access privileges based on time and location. They could even filter
content so that only Web sites associated with the course being taught are accessible.
"Higher education is really driving that one," Thompson says. "There’s
a real backlash now [against ubiquitous Web access] at colleges."
Intelligent information management appeals to sports, entertainment and tourist
destinations. Earlier this year PanGo announced a strategic alliance with Kosmo Studios, a firm that creates wireless
content for amusement parks, zoos, aquariums and sports arenas — including
the Pittsburg Steelers football club, NBA City and AT&T Webopolis at Disneyland
Innoventions.
Hospitals are another key target market. PDA-toting physicians could have patient
charts automatically pushed to their PDAs as they walk into a hospital room.
Health care institutions are also a key market for asset tracking technology.
In fact, they will likely start with asset tracking because the return on investment
is clearer than it is for intelligent information management, Thompson says.
Hospitals expend hundreds of hours of staff time a year looking for wheel chairs,
pumps, diagnostic and monitoring equipment and other big-ticket assets on wheels.
They also typically maintain a 30-percent excess in inventory on these items
to allow for loss and theft.
Wireless asset tracking saves worker time, helps locate sometimes urgently
needed equipment more quickly and allows hospitals to reduce inventory, Thompson
says.
Many have already installed proprietary wireless asset tracking systems or
are seriously considering it. These systems involve attaching a wireless "tag"
to the asset. The system can then triangulate the tag’s location on demand.
Proprietary systems can cost up to $1 million, though, Thompson says. For hospitals
that are already deploying Wi-Fi networks for other applications — as a growing
number are — adding a PanGo-based asset tracking capability would be "orders
of magnitude" less expensive. Plus, the hospital wouldn’t have two wireless
networks to manage and maintain.
Current Wi-Fi tags — really just stripped-down NICs — are about the size
of a small stack of business and cost less than $40.
Beyond asset tracking of big-ticket items, there are also possible inventory
control applications in retail. The idea would be to tag every item in the store.
Taking inventory could be done automatically in seconds. There are huge challenges,
though, Thompson cautions. The tags would have to be much, much smaller and
much, much cheaper.
"[The cost for tags] has got to be less than a penny, and the problem
is, when you get to that level, you lose a lot of the intelligence," he
explains. "This is not an application that we’re targeting as we speak,
but there are big retail corporations that are taking serious looks at it."
Besides the specific applications PanGo offers, the company’s locationing systems
provide network administrators better reporting and control of their wireless
networks. They can tell where users are and how long they’ve spent there, and
they can generate statistical reports.
With wired LANs, tech support personnel can physically locate users by IP address,
but with the advent of mobile networks — especially on a large campus — it’s
not so simple. The PanGo technology can help there too.
"It allows network administrators a lot more control," Thompson says.
"For now they’re just concerned with getting basic security in place, but
once they’ve solved that, then they’ll want more."
Future applications include intelligent information management in Wi-Fi hotspots.
A traveler gets off a plane at Laguardia and turns on his Wi-Fi-enabled PDA,
for example, and immediately the local network pushes out floor plans of the
airport, flight and ground transport information and directions to — or, more
ominously, ads from — on site restaurants and shopping.
As in wide area networks, where location-based services were first talked about
five years ago, privacy is a real concern — one reason PanGo is staying away
from this kind of application for now.
"This is something we see down the pike," Thompson says. "It’s
one of the things we keep an eye on, not something we’re actively pursuing."
It’s still early days yet for Wi-Fi locationing. The Tate is in fact the only
customer up and running that PanGo has made public — and it announced the Tate
last October. It has two other customers deployed that have not been
publicized, one major university in the process and several tests and trials
underway.
PanGo doesn’t have this emerging market to itself, though. At least three other
firms are also in the running — Newbury
Networks, Bluesoft
and Ekahau.
Thompson says competitors’ solutions either include hardware, which increases
their costs, and/or they only provide the locationing engine, not application
software, such as the PanGo Docent application used at the Tate.
The PanGo technology is relatively inexpensive to start. Deploying the locationing
engine in a 10-access point network could cost as little as $5,000 for perpetual
licenses, Thompson says. Application software would be extra.
It’s far too early to predict the future of location-based services and applications
in Wi-Fi networks, but PanGo believes the move away from intelligent access
points to Wi-Fi switches — with more of the intelligence in the switches —
will hasten acceptance.
This will make Wi-Fi access points cheaper, he explains, which means network
designers will likely deploy more of them rather than expending a lot of effort
on site surveys to precisely position a relatively few. The more access points,
the better PanGo’s technology works.
There is an interesting counter trend: using antenna-based wireless distribution
systems, which actually reduces the number of access points. Thompson is sure
the move to Wi-Fi switches is the dominant trend — or hopes it is.
"The switch market started last year," he notes. "This year
we’re seeing more deployment. 2004 will be the big year [for Wi-Fi switches].
Locationing will still be in the early phases through 2003 and 2004. Then it
opens up in 2005."
In the meantime, PanGo is laying the groundwork. It has announced several partnership
and reseller agreements this year, including most recently, a reseller deal
with Aloha Mobile.Net, a WLAN systems integrator
in Honolulu HI.
