U.S. Department of Defense medical institutions use RTLS system to track assets
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The Walter Reed Military Medical Center, one of the largest medical institutions within the US Department of Defense, is now using Awarepoint’s real-time location system (RTLS) location equipment. The Awarepoint system uses ZigBee-based RFID tags, and the hospital plans to use this system to track 4000 pieces of medical equipment.
The hospital hopes that the Awarepoint system can help medical staff quickly locate the equipment, so as to have more time to take care of the patient and reduce the patient’s waiting time. When the regular maintenance time of a piece of equipment expires, the administrator can use the system to automatically generate relevant information; or in the case of returns, quickly locate the equipment.
Awarepoint and Walter Reed signed a five-year service contract, which includes: system installation, management and maintenance. The company plans to install the system after Thanksgiving and complete the installation in mid-November.
Awarepoint uses active 2.48 GHz RFID tags to locate assets. The tags use the 802.15.4 (ZigBee) communication protocol to send their unique ID number to a small receiver (access point) directly plugged into a standard 120V AC power socket. The tag and the receiver also play the role of a radio transceiver, communicating with each other through a network networking protocol. The tag can first transmit the data to another tag, which according to whether it is within the reading range of the main access control point, and then transmits the information to an independent tag or the main access control point. In the Awarepoint network, tags can transmit information along the network bridge to up to 5 tags and receivers.
From left to right are Awarepoint access control points, tags and bridges
The receiver uses the ZigBee protocol to transmit the ID number of the first tag, the signal strength, the reading time and the ID of the radio transceiver to the network bridge. Generally speaking, two network bridges are installed on each floor of the hospital. The bridge is connected to a central Awarepoint server through an Ethernet cable. The server calculates the location of all tagged assets and displays the information on an electronic map. Computers in the system’s local area network can view the map and use Awarepoint software to search for a specific type of asset. The software can locate the 1-3 meters range of the asset location. Awarepoint uses a proprietary algorithm to determine the location of assets based on the strength of the tag’s radio frequency signal.
Compared with the platform using Wi-Fi RFID tags, the biggest advantage of the Awarepoint RTLS system is that the Awarepoint access control points can be directly plugged into any available power source. In addition, because ZigBee devices transmit data at a slower speed than Wi-Fi tags, Awarepoint tags require less power. The battery of the Awarepoint label can last up to 5 years.
End users do not need to purchase the system from Awarepoint, they only need to rent it from them at a rate of $10 per month for each labeling device.
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