Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise has evolved its OmniAccess Stellar Asset Tracking solution, a key part of the company’s indoor location services portfolio, with the addition of new Contact Tracing features.
The global health crisis has highlighted the need for organisations to have some method of contact tracing to keep track of past close physical contact between individuals, in order to keep their employees and customers safe.
Real-time Contact Tracing also enables organisations to proactively manage the number of people present in a specific area and enforce social distancing measures by establishing active density control. Visualisation, which supports density monitoring of sensitive areas, and contact tracing lets companies:
- Define an area to monitor
- Identify the number of individuals in the area
- Notify personnel concerned based on specific criteria (for example, people moving beyond a limit, or the number of people entering an area exceeding capacity limits)
- Use analytics to trace the history of location and flow of contacts. Customers can edit instant reports showing locations and flows of contacts, which can highlight duration and distance.
This allows companies to keep their doors open and focus on their business while remaining in compliance with evolving health regulations and maintaining the safety of their staff, customers and suppliers.
“Contact tracing has become an essential feature for Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise customers, especially in industries like healthcare or hospitality. Adding this high-performing and data-rich functionality to our OmniAccess Stellar Asset Tracking solution was important to meet changing requirements driven by social distancing in public spaces”, said Laurent Bouchoucha, VP Business Development at Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise.
Since its launch in the spring of 2020, the OmniAccess Stellar Asset Tracking solution has delivered effective asset tracking of critical items and people through the use of cost-effective Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) indoor location technology. The system also provides useful insight and location intelligence via historical and real-time positioning data and analytics, enabling improvements in productivity and workflow optimisation.
The solution uses the OmniAccess Stellar AP1201BG gateway, an enhancement to the OmniAccess Stellar WLAN portfolio. The OmniAccess Stellar AP1201BG can serve as both a BLE Gateway for asset tracking and a BLE Beacon for Location-Based Services, simultaneously. It provides cloud connectivity over an existing Wi-Fi or LAN infrastructure and eliminates the need for a separate BLE infrastructure for Asset Tracking or Location-Based Services.
“OmniAccess Stellar Asset Tracking helps locate assets and track the movements of individuals in real-time from a mobile device or web management tool. It can track more than just the whereabouts of your assets; it enables analytics on usage patterns and locations,” said Stephan Robineau, EVP of ALE’s Network Business Division. “Our overlay solution works with ALE unified fabric, including the latest Wi-Fi 6 BLE-enhanced access points, but also existing infrastructure. This makes the OmniAccess Stellar Asset Tracking solution easy to implement and especially beneficial for large facilities with many devices and personnel.”
