In door positioning: active RFID vs Bluetooth

 The indoor positioning market is developing in full swing, and various new technologies and new solutions have entered this market. As a veteran of the indoor positioning market, RFID and Bluetooth are also in love with each other. The two have many similarities, such as: both are 2.4G frequency bands, both are low power consumption, both can be located through base stations, and both can be assisted by third-party positioning. Wait, since there are so many similarities, you will hesitate when choosing a scheme. Which scheme is better? The user has no choice. Of course, the final choice is still to choose from the user’s scenario, but from the technical. In terms of development and reliability, the author believes that compared with RFID, Bluetooth positioning is the direction of development.

 

1.      Versatility

When choosing any technical solution, you need to consider the versatility of the equipment, especially whether there is only one option when expanding or adding new equipment in the future. If the technical solution selected in the early stage, there is no alternative in the later stage. For users, facing great risks, including the sustainability of the company's development, whether there will be a single source of falsely high costs in the future, and so on.

 

At present, the active RFID in the market is a private protocol, and the protocols of different manufacturers are not the same. No two devices can directly communicate with each other. If they are connected, they must be developed and connected. In order to set barriers, some manufacturers manually increase the equipment to connect. The difficulty of data connection is even more difficult. Once the supplier has a problem, the user's system will have to be replaced as a whole, which will cause huge losses.

 

2.      Device adaptability

Device adaptability refers to the connectivity of the positioning device with other devices on the market in addition to connecting with its own device. Only by interacting with more devices, there will be more and more application scenarios, and the integration of the business will become deeper and deeper, so as to avoid the formation of information islands.

 

The private protocol of active RFID inherently creates islands. Most of the active RFID applications on the market are their own applications, which are difficult to blend with other devices, which causes their own application scenarios to be solidified and there is no way to achieve more scenarios. And Bluetooth does not have such a dilemma. At present, electronic devices basically support the Bluetooth function, and the standard Bluetooth protocol also supports the interconnection and intercommunication of devices, so that more scenarios can be applied.

 

3.      Network diversity

At present, labor costs are getting higher and higher, and construction must be done by humans. How to reduce the difficulty of network coverage and network deployment during the construction process is an important topic currently facing. In addition to direct access to the network, Bluetooth can also be connected to the network through MESH, so that some places that are difficult to access the network cable can be directly connected to the network through Bluetooth.

 

4.      Future development

The development of any technology requires a large number of participants. The more participants, the better the universality of technology development and the more applications of technology, so as to better promote the development of technology. And the development of Bluetooth has a huge alliance to continuously promote technological progress, from 2.0, 4.0, 5.0, 5.1, each time is a technological advancement and integration, and each advancement can be compatible with the previous protocol. The private attributes of active RFID are difficult to form alliances to promote the development of technology, resulting in slow technological development, or even continuous inability to update.