IOSR Journal of Computer Engineering (IOSR-JCE) e-ISSN: 2278-0661,p-ISSN: 2278-8727, Volume 20, Issue 4, Ver. II (Jul - Aug 2018), PP 12-20 www.iosrjournals.org DOI: 10.9790/0661-2004021220 www.iosrjournals.org 12 | Page Performance Evaluation of Ekahau RTLS in Indoor Environments P. M. Asuquo 1 , K. M. Udofia 2 1,2 (Department of Electrical/Electronic and Computer Engineering, University of Uyo, Uyo, Nigeria) Corresponding Author: K. M. Udofia Abstract: The poor performance of global positioning system (GPS) in indoor environments has increased the demand for location based services (LBS) which is growing exponentially. This research work will look at the performance of Ekahau Real Time Location System (RTLS) an indoor positioning system, which is a software- based solution for tracking assets in real time. This work is carried out in different environments to evaluate the performance of Ekahau RTLS. The different experiments are clearly explained and the Experimental results indicate that Ekahau RTLS can achieve 3-5 metres of accuracy in a properly calibrated model. A comparative analysis carried out from the different test environments with different conditions shows that performance of Ekahau RTLS depends on density and placement of access points, quality of site survey and the nature of the experimental environment. Keywords – Ekahau, Real Time Location System, WLAN, RSSI --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date of Submission: 19-07-2018 Date of acceptance: 02-08-2018 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I. Introduction Indoor positioning systems have gained popularity over the years, which has led to the development of a large number of location aware services available commercially and for research purposes [1], [2]. The research on indoor positioning systems has grown tremendously as a result of the poor performance of GPS in indoor environments [3-5]. Wireless indoor positioning systems have been very successful in numerous applications. In hospitals, it can be used for asset tracking, patient and staff tracking and workflow [6, 7]. This system also finds immense application in areas like industries, commercial, public safety, daily life and military warfare [8, 9]. The combination of Wi-Fi and RTLS enables tracking of objects or people in real time. Angelo Lamme and Marcus Birkl of Motorola and Siemens are of the opinion that tracking of asset or people is one of the biggest incentives for hospitals, educational systems and companies to roll out Wi-Fi networks [1]. At this time is possible to state that Wi-Fi wireless local area network (WLAN) technology is feasible to provide localization, its main advantage is being a common technology that is provided almost everywhere nowadays [5] and [9]. But some of the shortcomings here affecting the application of this technology in location tracking include multipath effects which may reduce signal strength in indoor scenario. RTLS has been in existence in some form for over 40 years. It is a method of automatically identifying an asset that is, a person/object by storing and remotely retrieving information from small transponders called RTLS tags. These tags have an antenna built into them that allows transmission and reception of radio waves from an RTLS transceiver [8]. Traditional radio-frequency identification (RFID) use tags, readers, middleware and servers to deploy indoor tracking, but Ekahau does not require readers and can be adjusted to support tens of thousands of tags on a single server. Ekahau RTLS as a commercial positioning system uses existing WLANs and tracks devices where tags are mounted on [2]. Wi-Fi based indoor location system has shown to be both cost-effective since it makes use of existing WLAN infrastructure and is accurate, since they can attain metre- level positioning accuracy. This experimental research will look at the Ekahau RTLS which is a Wi-Fi based location is a tracking system that operates at room, sub-room and building level with accuracy and its performance in different test beds and conditions. The other parts of this work will be divided into sections. Section II will provide a review of some previous work. Section III will focus on experimental methods and design where different test beds, design considerations and experiments in all the test beds will be presented. Sections IV and V provide discussions of experimental results and conclusion respectively. II. Review of Previous Work Although not so much research have been carried out in this area, the few ones performed so far shows that location tracking in indoor environments using Ekahau RTLS is better when compared to other platforms considering certain factors such as a platform of deployment, cost, and accuracy and so on.