The TRX Sentrix™ Navigation Engine delivers a ready-to-navigate high definition location solution suited to tracking personnel inside both manmade and natural structures. TRX Sentrix™ technology supplies the ability to robustly micro-navigate teams of personnel in unknown environments where GPS may be unreliable, compasses may not function, floor plans or maps may be unavailable, and no pre-existing infrastructure may exist.
Background
Until now, infrastructure-free precision tracking of personnel where GPS is unavailable or degraded – such as when indoors, underground, and in urban centers has not been technically feasible. While GPS, WiFi, ultra-wideband, and RF tagging technologies are all applicable to tracking problems, individually they fall short of meeting the stringent and demanding requirements of precision personnel tracking in confined and occluded spaces such as buildings, ships, or caves. GPS is best suited to outdoor tracking applications with clear views of the sky that can tolerate position inaccuracies sometimes on the order of tens of meters. Within or near structures or obstacles, GPS signals are blocked or corrupted so severely as to make them unusable. WiFi location technology can be used to derive finer resolution location but relies on proximity to WiFi equipped structures and lacks the ability to provide elevation information. Because of this, WiFi is able to provide information about which multi-story building a person may be in but not on which floor the person is or where exactly the person within the structure; nor will it be viable in remote locations where access points are not available. Ultra wideband and RF tagging technologies are able to provide precision location information but require substantial pre-configuration of spaces and materials and are not suitable to applications that require timely, generic, adaptable, and ad-hoc tracking solutions.
TRX Sentrix
Sentrix implements an open and extensible architecture to integrate all available navigation sensor data. TRX motion classification algorithms continuously monitor and analyze the movement of personnel to characterize motions that are unique to people. A suite of sensor fusion and decision-making algorithms derive a cohesive navigation solution from a range of complementary sensors that include GPS receivers, ranging radios, compasses, gyroscopes, accelerometers, and altimeters. Available and inferred map information can further enhance accuracy.
The intelligence of the navigation engine lies in its ability to continually analyze and assess all sensor data for quality and consistency. Poorly functioning or degraded sensors are isolated and de-emphasized or eliminated in the navigation solution. Sensor integrity monitoring is a key innovative design feature that provides inherent and unparalleled navigation robustness. Without sufficient integrity monitoring, navigation solutions will be severely impacted when even a single sensor provides momentary but highly inaccurate readings. For example, a compass will react wildly to induced magnetic fields typically experienced when walking through a modern office building. Relying on compass data in such a situation will lead to erratic and unrealistic navigation solutions.
The Sentrix™ Navigation Engine is available directly from TRX as part of its Sentrix™ Tracking System product line as a standalone software module that can be embedded in partner products.