by Andrew Eick on November 1, 2008

Abstract—thincTrax™ is a visualization system and user interface for real-time tracking of assets. It is able to connect to generic location servers such as GPS, RFID and other location systems, ingest the positions of assets, and display the information on a Web 2.0 AJAX map. The system includes new visualizations for asset positions, geo-fencing, real-time alerting, and other management tools to support real-time tracking applications.

Index Terms—RFID Visualization, Real-time Tracking, Geo-fences, RFID Alerting, Incident Forensics, Web 2.0, AJAX.

Recently with the widespread deployment of GPS, RFID, and other tagging technologies, it has become possible to collect large quantities of geo-encoded tracking information. Some of the information contains true sequences of longitude and latitude positions of a moving object. Other information is less precise and only indicates that an object passed through a reader, e.g. a car with an RFID tag passing through a tollbooth, or an asset entered a zone. Although GPS and RFID are perhaps the most widely recognized location systems, they are examples of what is rapidly becoming a wide variety of sensor and tagging systems that provide real-time location information. Real-Time Location Systems (RTLS) determine the locations of tagged assets. The systems are complex and use tags, readers, and sensors with sophisticated algorithms to determine the positions of tagged assets. For example, some RFID RTLS systems use triangulation algorithms involving signal amplitude, energy levels, time-of-flight, and differential time-of-flight along with floor plan maps to determine a tag’s location. The location might be with respect to other tags or with respect to warehouse coordinates. GPS-based RTLS’s calculate asset positions by measuring delays from signals emitted from geo-synchronous orbital satellites. These systems can track longitude and latitude of asset to within a few feet.