Indoor location
Indoor Location is a feature that allows the location; of Bluetooth 4.x-enabled MOTOTRBO radios to be tracked, when no GNSS signal is available - most notably indoors.
Operation
The Bluetooth4.x-enabled MOTOTRBO radio listens for the signal transmitted by all known in-range beacons and sends this data to the server application,which requested for the beacons data, over the air in the same way GNSS updates would be sent. The received data is mapped to the strategically deployed indoor location, and presented to the user via a mapping application.
Motorola Solutions' LRRP protocol is used to process the request and responses. The indoor location data is encapsulated in the LRRP protocol with or without the outdoor location data. Thus, either indoor and/or outdoor data can be requested by the mapping application.
Supported Beacon Hardware
iBeacon is Apple's implementation of Bluetooth Low Energy (BTLE) wireless technology to create a different way of providing location-based information and services to iPhones and other iOS devices. This name has become the de facto industry term for any Bluetooth beacon.
MOTOTRBO radios support all BTLE beacons, both from Apple and other vendors such as Kontakt.io; Estimote, Roximity and Gimbal.
Supported MOTOTRBO Systems and Hardware
The indoor location feature is supported in all digital modes except simplex (ERDM and DCDM).
Some older MOTOTRBO radios only support Bluetooth 2.x or require the use of an external dongle. These models do not support indoor location.
Starting with the R7 and ION, all high-tier MOTOTRBO radios will support Bluetooth 5.x - which is backwards compatible with at least Bluetooth 4.x.
Hardware Selection and Configuration
Beacon selection
When selecting beacon hardware for indoor location deployment, it is recommended that the following attributes be programmable:
- UUID is a region identifier that distinguishes the to-be-deployed beacons from unknown beacons.
- Major is used to group a related set of beacons for location mapping.
- Minor is used to identify an individual beacon within the Major group, for location mapping.
- TX Power is the strength of the signal measured at 1 meter from the iBeacon. Usually this is shown as a two's compliment hexadecimal number.
- BLE Advertisement Time Interval specifies the beacon periodic advertisement broadcast interval. Lowering this setting will have a negative impact on battery life. Also, since there may not be so many radios passing a point at any time when compared to mobile phones, this value can in some cases, be increased.
For optimum performance, a beacon which has an omnidirectional antenna with configurable range should be chosen.
Beacon Configuration
Most vendors ships their beacons with the same vendor-assigned UUID. When deploying a system, the site must be surveyed to track for existing beacons so as to ensure the to-be-deployed beacon UUID is not the same. Only the desired UUID is (are) programmed into the Radio. The to-be deployed beacons must be provisioned with the same UUID. Some vendors provide a fleet management tool for batch beacon configuration.
Radio Configuration
Some radios require a CfS licence to enable Bluetooth. Bluetooth needs be to therefore purchased and enabled. On newer radios, Bluetooth is included/free.
Scan Mode is a RM/CPS configurable parameter used for configuring the Bluetooth advertisement scan bandwidth. When Normal is selected, the radio uses 50% of the 100ms Bluetooth scan advertisement bandwidth to perform scan within the Scan Interval On Time. If Aggressive is selected, the radio uses 75% of the 100ms Bluetooth scan advertisement bandwidth to perform the scan within the Scan Interval On Time. The Scan Mode is only available when the radio is not connected to Wi-Fi Access Point. If the radio is connected to a Wi-Fi AP, it uses only 20% of the 100ms Bluetooth scan advertisement bandwidth to perform scan within the Scan Interval On Time.
Scan Interval On Time and Scan Interval Off Time are RM or CPS configurable parameters. They instruct the radio to turn BLE scanning on or off for the configured time. These two values represent a duty cycle. When Indoor Location is turned on, the radio performs the BLE scan continuously based on this duty cycle until it is turned off by the user.
Indoor Location is used to enable or disable the Indoor Location feature. If it’s enabled, the radio starts scanning for the beacon by default. The Menu or Programmable Button can be used to turn on/off scan.
Beacon UUID. Up to 20 programmable UUID shall be supported, and the radio listens to the configured UUID only. At least one UUID must be programmed in the radio. Otherwise, the feature is considered disabled. A LRRP request message can be used to instruct the radio to listen to any iBeacon device, but the LRRP request is not remembered after the radio powers off.