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Wi-Fi Location-based Analytics

CTS 132 – Location-Based Analytics

August 6, 2018 Rowell Podcast 00:54:14 0 Comments

Recorded at Cisco Live 2018 in Orlando, FL, we speak to Christian Gauer about Wi-Fi location-based analytics.

Meet Greg Skeene

Our featured wireless engineer for this episode is Greg Skeene. He’s a listener of the show and we finally met up during a meetup at Cisco Live. Listen to the episode to hear him answer François’ 10 questions.

Greg Skeene - Wi-Fi Engineer

Location-Based Analytics

This episode was recorded at Cisco Live 2018 in the Podcast Domain. Our guest is Christian Gauer, a TME in Cisco focused on location-based analytics.

We’re new to location-based analytics so we wanted to know more about it. Especially with the increased amount of IoT devices coming on the network. Can we use that data to make business decisions?

What are some of the expectations for location-based analytics? We can expect to do way-finding, locating a device, using an app to locate yourself to draw line on the map of where to go.

Location is calculated by a Cisco CMX box. Data going into CMX needs to be accurate. This means design will be critical. APs should be mounted on the ceiling up to 20 feet high. Multi-trangulation is used in measuring distance-based on RSSI.

More accurate measurements is done with angle of arrival. Multi-trangulation needs more than 3 APs for higher accuracy. More than just triangulation. Why 3 APs minimum? Because of triangulation. With wireless location, a device needs to be inside context of APs. For location, start at the perimeter of the walls.

But why go into location-based analytics? Everyone wants to know whats going on. Top use cases – retail wants to know what’s going on in a shop and how much time customers are spending time in the shop and which section. An airport may want to know what’s going on with security, how much time people are spending there, or maybe there are too many people crowding at the gate.

Take a coffee chain with many locations into consideration. They offer free Wi-Fi. Device get connected and now the coffee chain can track who is connecting to their Wi-Fi network. But how many APs does a coffee shop need? Maybe need 1 or 2 APs for coverage. What kind of info can you get out of it? Is it important where someone sits, maybe not? It can be difficult differentiating someone sitting next to another.. or lining up. Presence provides detection of customer which means you can find out who is stopping by multiple shops. This is how you identify return visitors and measure dwell time. Other methods of using location-based analytics includes having an idea of how busy the store is for staff planning or how long it takes customers to get cup of coffee.

But a store needs to ask the question from the customer point of view, why should I connect to the Wi-Fi? There has to be an offer.

Listen to the episode for more details!

Links & Resources

Overhead view of a city

CTS 129: 5G Technology

July 16, 2018 Rowell Podcast 00:31:04 0 Comments

Recorded at Cisco Live 2018 in Orlando, Florida. We speak to Mike Geller and Pramod Nair about 5G technology and what Wi-Fi professionals would know about.

5G Technology

Rowell Dionicio, François Vergès, Mike Geller, and Pramod Nair talking about 5G

We’ve been hearing a lot about 5G lately. But do many of you what is involved with 5G? We just know it’s the next number up from 4G 😉

We recorded an episode with Mike Geller and Pramod Nair, Cisco employees, at the Podcast Domain in Cisco Live Orlando, Florida. There’s some background noise from the attendees at Cisco Live but you’ll still be able to hear the conversation.

As Wi-Fi professionals, what should we know about 5G? What is it all about? Hopefully, Mike and Pramod can shed some light on this topic for us.

First thing to know, is 5G caters to a set of use cases. Pramod points out this is the first time we’ve seen something driven by use cases. Some of those use cases for 5G are low latency for IoT and fixed wireless access. There’s the vehicle to everything use case. It can include Wi-Fi transmission but doesn’t define what RF interface to use, regulated or not.

What we do know, spectrum is always going to be a scarce, finite, resource. There is a possibility to use Wi-Fi and LTE together. Possibly use Wi-Fi on specific IoT use cases so we can better use spectrum more efficiently.

More importantly, we will not see 5G replace Wi-Fi. Mike Geller and Pramod Nair do not consider them as competing technologies.

Wi-Fi has been there yesterday, Wi-Fi is there today, Wi-Fi will be there tomorrow. – Pramod Nair

If you listen around the 10:50 minute mark, Pramod makes a funny statement. 

The differentiator in 5G is the network has the capability to tell the device which slice of network resources it should follow. There can be a radio interface to cover your phone, your friends phone, and another phone. Each phone can have a different profile because of data packages. You can put any of those phones on a different slice all together. Here, it just becomes more flexible. The network is becoming more complex but the use case is becoming easier.

Listen to the episode to hear the full conversation.

Links and Resources

Top 5 Episodes

CTS 086: Capacity Planner, Ubiquiti and Fedex Forum

CTS 064: Wi-Fi Roundtable 1 – Part 1

CTS 052: How To Validate Wi-Fi Infrastructure

CTS 084: Channel Widths with Devin Akin

CTS 062: K12 Wi-Fi Deployments with Jim Vajda