EQUIPMENT TRACKING AND SECURITY SYSTEM FOR HOSPITAL

ENVIRONMENT USING WLAN INDOOR LOCATION TRACKING SYSTEM

ZUHER H.M FHELELBOOM

UNIVERSITI TEKNOLOGI MALAYSIA

iii

To God the Almighty, without whom knowledge without faith is fruitless and

to my parent, who have molded me into who I am.

iv

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, and Most Merciful

First, I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere and utmost

gratitude to my project supervisor Prof.Dr Tharek Bin Abdul Rahman for this vision,

guidance and support throughout the duration that I undertook to complete this

project successfully.

Secondly, I would like to convey my deepest gratitude to Mr. Chua Tien Han,

for preparing the relevant groundwork for research in the field of indoor location

tracking in the Wireless Communication centre, P15, Faculty of Electrical

Engineering, UTM. His suggestions and comments on methodologies that I chose

helped me avoid the common pitfalls in this filed of work

Also I would like to thank friends and stuff in (WCC) for their help facilities

and for providing conductive working environment

I would like also to express my gratitude to Mr. Usman Ullah Sheikh, mentor

friend and guru during software development phase utilizing Java. His tips and

advice help quicken my learning curve in java programming.

Last but not least, I would like to thank my parents, my siblings and all my

friends that have given their moral support during the ups and down of my project

work life cycle.

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ABSTRACT

Location tracking systems has brought tremendous benefits, especially to the

medical field; one of its benefits is to help keeping track of critical equipment of the

hospital which is a challenge in any hospitals. However hospital's equipment often

scattered throughout the facility, forcing busy staff to waste precious time tracking

down intravenous pumps, wheelchairs or other equipment. Furthermore, hospital also

suffers the lost of the equipment due to thefts. Therefore, equipment management

system using Wireless Location Area (WLAN) based indoor location tracking

system is proposed to alleviate these problems. A simple measurement campaign will

be conducted to study the properties of the Ekahau location tracking system and then

the equipment management system which include real-time equipment tracking and

security system. Ekahau WLAN-based indoor location tracking system will be

applied in this project to provide real-time location estimation. Each equipment will

equipped with Ekahau WLAN Tag, and its location will be calculated by the Ekahau

engine server. The location is predicated through WLAN signal strength finger-

printing technique. Requirements of basic equipment tracking and security will be

developed and examined in Java platform. A test-bed would then be setup within the

confines of the WCC (wireless Communication Centre) using the existing WLAN

incorporating the IEEE 802.11g standard AP (Access Point) and adapters. The

location of the equipment will be provided by Ekahau positioning engine software

readily available at the WCC. At the end of the project, a system which is capable to

provide real-time equipment's location to user will be developed. Besides that the

system will be capable to give alert to the control centre if the hospital's equipment is

brought out from the authorized area.

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ABSTRAK

Sistem penjejak lokasi telah membawa manfaat yang sangat besar,

terutamanya kepada bidang perubatan, salah satu manfaatnya ialah membantu

menjejak peralatan kritikal hospital, dimana ia merupakan satu cabaran dimana-mana

hospital. Walau bagaimanapun peralatan hospital sering bertempiaran di sekitar

kemudahan hospital. Ini memaksa staf yang sibuk membazir masa yang berharga

untuk menjejak pam intravena, kerusi beroda, atau peralatan lain. Tambahan lagi

hospital juga mengalami kehilangan peralatan akibat pencuri. Oleh yang demikian,

sistem pengurusan peralatan menggunakan sistem penjejak lokasi dalam bangunan

berasaskan rangkaian kawasan setempat wayerles (WLAN) dicadangkan untuk

meringankan masalah-masalah ini. Satu kempen pengukuran mudah akan dijalankan

untuk mengkaji ciri-ciri sistem penjejak lokasi Ekahau dan kemudiannya sistem

pengurusan peralatan yang merangkumi penjejakan peralatan masa-nyata dan sistem

keselamatan. Sistem penjejak lokasi dalam bangunan Ekahau yang berasaskan

WLAN akan digunakan dalam projek ini untuk membekalkan penganggaran lokasi

masa-nyata. Setiap peralatan akan dilengkapi dengan tag WLAN Ekahau dan

lokasinya akan dkira oleh pelayan enjin Ekahau. Lokasi diramal melalui teknik

pencap-jarian kekuatan isyarat WLAN. Keperluan-keperluan asas penjejakan

peralatan dan keselamatan akan dibangunkan dan diselidik dalam platform Java.

Tapak pengujian kemudiannya akan dibentuk di pusat komunikasi wayarles (WCC)

dengan menggunakan WLAN sedia ada yang menggabungkan titik capaian (AP)

TEEE802.11g dan adapter. Lokasi peralatan akan diberi oleh perisian enjin lokasi

Ekahau yang sedia ada di WCC. Di penghujung projek, sebuah sistem yang berupaya

untuk memberi lokasi masa-nyata peralatan kepada pengguna akan dibangunkan.

Disamping itu, sistem tersebut akan berupaya memberi amaran kepada pusat kawalan

jika peralatan hospital dibawa keluar daripada kawasan yang dibenarkan.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER TITLE PAGE

DECLARATION ii.

DEDICATION iii.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT iv.

ABSTRACT v.

ABSTRAK vi.

TABLES OF CONTENTS vii.

LIST OF FIGURES xi.

LIST OF TABLES xiv.

LIST OF ABREVIATIONS xv.

LIST OF APPENDIX xvi.

1 INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Introduction 1

1.2 Problem Statement 3

1.3 Objective 3

1.4 Scope of Work 4

1.5 Thesis Organization 6

2 LITERATURE REVIEW 7

2.1 Positioning System 7

2.2 Classification of Positioning Infrastructures 9

2.2.1 Integrated and Stand-Alone

Infrastructures 9

2.2.2 Network and Terminal-based Positioning 10

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2.2.3 Satellites, Cellular, and Indoor

Infrastructures 11

2.2.3.1 Satellite Infrastructures 11

2.2.3.2 Cellular Infrastructures 12

2.2.3.3 Indoor Infrastructures 13

2.3 Global Positioning System (GPS) 13

2.3.1 Space Segment 13

2.3.2 Control Segment 14

2.3.3 User Segment 15

2.4 Cell of Origin (COO) /Cell ID (CID) 17

2.4.1 Cell of Origin (COO) /Cell ID (CID)

Positioning Technique 18

2.4.1.1 Timing Measurements

TOA/TDOA 18

2.4.1.2 Angle of Arrival 19

2.4.1.3 Enhanced-Observed Time

Difference 20

2.5 Indoor Positioning System 21

2.5.1 Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) 21

2.5.1.1 Principles of WLAN Positioning 22

2.5.1.2 WLAN Fingerprinting 23

2.5.2 RFID Positioning 25

2.5.3 Infrared (IR) Based 26

2.5.4 Ultrasound-based Systems 28

2.6 Ekahau Positioning Engine 29

2.6.1 Positioning Engine Architecture 31

2.6.1.1 Hardware Components 31

2.6.1.2 Software Components 33

2.6.2 Positioning Method

33

2.7 Market segments of Location Based Services 34

3 SYSTEM DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT 35

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3.1 Designing and Developing Real Time Equipment

Tracking System 35

3.2 Indoor WLAN positioning engine (Ekahau

Positioning Engine 3.) 39

3.3 Test-Bed selection 40

3.4 Hardware Specification and Setup 40

3.4.1 Wireless IEEE 802.11g Access. points 41

3.4.2 Mobile Station (Laptop) 43

3.4.3 Ekahau T101 Wi-Fi Tag 44

3.5 Ekahau Software Setup (both engine and client) 46

3.6 Ekahau site Calibration 48

3.7 Software Development Tools 50

3.7.1 Ekahau Software Development Kit 3.0

(SDK 3.0) 51

3.7.2 Selection of SDK™ Java API or Ekahau YAX™

51

3.7.3 Understanding Location Estimates 52

3.7.4 Understanding the Logical Areas 53

3.7.5.1 Creating Logical Areas 53

3.8 Java and the Java Development Kit (JDK 1.4.2) 54

3.8.1 Mastering a Java Integrated Development Environment (IDE)-JBuilder

55

3.8.1.1 JBuilder Workspace 55

3.9 Development of Equipment Tracking System user-

interface Module 56

3.10 Development of Tracking Module 56

3.11 Trail Run of the System 57

3.12 WLAN Signal Strength (SS) Measurement 57

3.13 The Effect of Access Points and Calibration

Nodes on the Accuracy 58

4 PROGRAM IMPLEMENTATION AND

DISCUSSION 59

4.1 Positioning System Program Requirement 59

4.2 Program Functionality 60

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4.3 Program Implementation 61

5 PROPERTIES of WLAN-BASED INDOOR

LOCATION TRACKING SYSTEM 64

5.1 Properties WLAN Signal Strength 64

5.1.1 Properties of Signal Strength at Different

Time 65

5.1.2 Properties of Signal Strength at Different

Locations 66

5.2 Effects of Number of APs on the Accuracy 70

5.3 Effects of Number of Calibration Nodes on the

Accuracy. 71

6 CONCLUSION AND PROPOSED FUTURE WORK

72

6.1 Conclusion 72

6.2 Future Works 73

REFERENCES 74

APPENDICES A-E 77-102

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LIST OF FIGURES

FIGURE NO. TITLE PAGE

1.1 Tree diagram of location-A ware Equipment tracking and

security system using WLAN indoor location tracking

system

5

2.1 Positioning Infrastructures 8

2.2 Classification scheme for Positioning Infrastructures 9

2.3 GPS Constellation 14

2.4 GPS Control stations 15

2.5 GPS Absolute Positioning 16

2.6 GPS Positioning Based on Time of Arrival Principles 16

2.7 Base Station Configurations in a Cellular Network 17

2.8 Cell-ID Methods 18

2.9 TOA/TDOA 19

2.10 Angle of Arrival 20

2.11 E-OTD 20

2.12 Modes for fingerprinting 24

2.13 ActiveBadge and WIPS 27

2.14 Ultrasound Infrastructure 29

3.1 Block Diagram of the System 36

3.2 System Design and Development Flowchart 37

3.3 EPE Concept 39

3.4 WCC 1st Floor layout 40

3.5 Dlink DWL-2000AP+ Wireless Router and Access point 42

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3.6 Toshiba Satellite M100 equipped with WLAN Card (Intel

PRO/Wireless 3945ABG)

44

3.7 Ekahau T101 Wi-Fi Tag 44

3.8 EPE Model Creating and Calibration Setup 48

3.9 Ekahau Manger Login Screen 48

3.10 Using the Measure tool for setting map scale and

conversion from pixels to meters

49

3.11 Calibration Phase; sample points are recorded while the

user rotates laptop at a full 360o

50

3.12 Assignments of Logical Areas 54

3.13 JBuilder workspace 55

3.14 Main window of the Program 56

3.15 A screenshot of NetStumbler Listing Available Access

Points

57

3.16 Ekahau Manager (Accuracy analysis) 58

4.1 Main Program Interface 61

4.2 Interface of Adding New Equipment 61

4.3 View the Available Equipments 62

4.4 Alert if the Equipment taken away from defined location 62

4.5 Interface of searching for specific Equipment 63

4.6 Ekahau Tracking View map 63

5.1 Measurement of the SS during non-busy Hours 65

5.2 Measurement of the SS during busy Hours 65

5.3 Floor 1 WCC, UTM with the locations of APs 66

5.4 RSS at location A 67

5.5 RSS at location B 67

5.6 RSS at location C 67

5.7 RSS at location D 68

5.8 RSS at location E 68

5.9 RSS at location F 68

5.10 RSS at location G 69

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5.11 shows the overall result of RSS, at different locations 69

5.12 Effects of number of APs on the accuracy 70

5.13 Effects of number of APs on the Accuracy 71

5.14 Effects of number of Calibration nodes on the accuracy 71

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LIST OF TABLES

NO TITLE PAGE

2.1 Overview of positioning methods 8

2.2 Overview of WLAN fingerprinting systems 25

2.3 location-based Application based on Market

segment 34

3.1 Components of Ekahau Positioning Engine 47

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

AOA - Angle of Arrival

AP - Access Point

CID - Cell Identification

COO - Cell of Origin

EPE - Ekahau Positioning Engine

GPS - Global Positioning System

GSM - Global System

IEEE - Institution of Electrical and Electronic Engineering

LAN - Local Area Network

RSS - Received Signal Strength

SS - Signal Strength

WCC - Wireless Communication centre

WLAN - Wireless Local Area Network

Wi-Fi - Wireless Fidelity

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LIST OF APPENDIX

APPENDIX TITLE PAGE

A EKAHAU SDK TESTER VIEWR 77

B Signal Strength Measurement during Non-Busy Hours

and Non Busy Hours

92

C Measurement of the RSS at different Location 94

D Number of Access points(Accuracy analysis) 101

E Number of Calibration Nodes (Accuracy analysis) 102

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Introduction

Wireless networks are becoming more and more popular in build

environment such as in hospitals, universities, malls and so on, in build environment

prefer to set up a wireless network rather than the traditionally wired network

because the flexibility and freedom it can provided. Based on the wireless

infrastructure, a great many new and promising applications are coming into our

lives.

Now wireless local area network (WLAN) is not just a mere communications

system, it can be used to locate people and objects Locations, based on signal

strengths received from access points, this is called the WLAN Positioning System.

To implement a successful location based application, the most important is to locate

mobile devices accurately, at least within an acceptable range, to pin-point the user’s

positioning.

The problem of positioning and tracking has been tackled by many systems

over the years, such as GPS, wide-area cellular-based system, infrared-based system,

magnetic tracking system, physical contact systems and radio frequency based

systems. Locating objects and people outdoors is becoming trivial by using

technologies like Global Positioning System (GPS), GPS makes a big success in

outdoor navigation, but fails in indoor due to the indoor channel characteristics,

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accurately estimating location for indoors environment remains a difficult. There are

actually various ways for determining and tracking position indoors, but to do so

accurately remain very costly; deployment of sensors all around a building or the

usage of expensive hardware might be required. Radio frequency-based tracking in

WLAN has gained more and more attention in recent years, because it makes use of

existing WLAN infrastructure, requires no extra hardware, and provides relatively

large coverage [1].

Location tracking systems brings with it tremendous benefits, especially to

the medical field, one of its benefits are to help track critical equipment of the

hospital, keeping track of equipment is a challenge in any hospital, no matter how

large or small are they. However, hospital's equipments are often scattered

throughout the facility, forcing busy staff to waste precious time tracking down the

equipments. If the equipment can not be found, hospitals unnecessarily purchase or

rent replacements. However, in the emergence case the time lost because of the

equipment unavailability, putting patient at risk. It can be expensive and can cost

human life; in addition hospitals can loose a lot of money in medical equipment due

to thefts.

For example, in-patient bedside medical equipment consists of an infusion

pump and a physiological monitoring system that monitors most parameters such as

ECG, heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen saturation and other parameters. An infusion

pump is used to administer medicine or nutrient, often through a vein. These pumps,

mounted on an IV (intravenous) cart, are highly mobile equipment that are allocated

to General Service, thus making it difficult to locate a specific infusion pump prior to

a repair. In addition, these pumps are often misplaced or stolen due to the nature of

its use [2].

This project is proposed to design and develop a real time Equipment

Tracking and Security System for Hospital environment based on WLAN indoor

location tracking system to alleviate the problems which are mentioned above. A

simple measurement campaign will be conducted to study the properties of the

Ekahau [3] location tracking system, and then the equipment management system

which include real-time equipment tracking and security system. The equipment

3

tracking system using WLAN-based indoor location tracking system will provide the

physical location of the equipment at any time within the coverage of the hospital.

The equipment security system will provide protection of the equipment from theft.

Ekahau WLAN-based indoor location tracking system will be applied in this project

to provide real-time location estimation. Each equipment will be equipped with an

Ekahau WLAN Tag and its location will be calculated by the Ekahau engine server.

The location is predicated through WLAN signal strength finger-printing technique.

At the end of the project, a system which is capable to provide real-time equipment's

location to user will be developed. Besides that the system will be capable to give

alert to the control centre if the hospital's equipment is taken away from the

authorized area.

1.2 Problem Statement

• The most current system used is manual.

• More time is wasted in search of equipments.

• In case of emergency time is an important constraint.

• Theft of equipments will cost the hospital in replacing them.

1.3 Objective

• To design and develop a real time hospital equipment management system which

will includes equipment tracking and security system, using WLAN indoor

location tracking system.

• To study the properties of WLAN signal strength (SS) for indoor location

tracking application.

• To study the properties of WLAN-based indoor location tracking system.

4

1.4 Scope of Work

The equipment management system would be developed and examined into

an electronic version based on the Java platform. The Implementation of WLAN-

based indoor location for real time tracking will be done by utilizing Ekahau

Positioning Engine [3] (Mapping, Fingerprinting and calibration), as well as this

project will involve building Database for all equipments available in the hospital for

security and management purposes.

A test-bed would then be setup within the confines of the wireless

Communication Centre (WCC), Block P15 Faculty of Electrical Engineering, using

the existing WLAN incorporating the IEEE 802.11g standard Access Point (AP),

Tags which are attached to the hospital equipments will be use in order to emulate

the location of the equipment. A two-dimensional map covering the entire ground

floor building of WCC is covered in the system saved into the positioning engine and

scaled accordingly. The received signal strength intensity (RSSI) index of the test-

bed would be obtained from the calibration run of the positioning engine using the

propriety software on the previously stored scaled map. This commonly, known as

the finger printing technique. The location of the equipment will be calculated by

using the positioning engine software from the RSSI obtains during the calibration

process.

An interface would then be developed into the equipment management

recorder application, to extract the location of the equipment. This will be done by

obtaining the received signal strength which is emitted by the tag, and comparing it

with the recorded RSSI which obtained from the calibration process.

Equipment tracking and security system using WLAN indoor location

tracking system is does not involve any hardware development as the existing

hardware are readily available off-the shelf. It only consists of the software

development cycle in a Java. WCC has been chosen as the perfect test-bed to run

simulated test of the software as the existing access point are sufficiently installed

and EPE server is deployed within the confines of building itself.

5

Equipment Tracking and Security System using WLAN indoor location tracking system

WLAN indoor location Tracking system

IEEE 802.11 b/g WLAN Infrastructure

Figure 1.1: Tree Diagram of Location –A Ware Equipment Tracking and Security System Using WLAN Indoor Location Tracking System

From the tree diagram as shown from figure 1 the lowest hierarchical level is

the physical WLAN infrastructure, which involve access points, WLAN PCMCIA

cards, laptops and Ekahau WLAN Tag. One layer above the WLAN indoor location

tracking system consist of Ekahau Position Engine 3.0 (EPE) is the only software

based real time location system currently in market. The top of the diagram is the

Equipment tracking and security system using WLAN indoor location tracking

system.

Moreover this project will include a proper study of the properties of the

WLAN-based indoor location tracking system; this will include examining of the

WLAN signal strength (SS), at different time and locations, in order to prove the

stability and reliability of location tracking using WLAN SS finger-printing

technique. The measurement of SS will be obtained using NetworkStumbler

software. Besides that, the effects of number of access points, and calibration nodes

on the location estimation accuracy will be investigated by using Ekahau manager

accuracy analysis.

6

1.5 Thesis Organization

The first chapter the provides readers, glimpse at the basic aspects of the

research undertaken such as problem statement objectives, and scope of work,.

The second chapter gives an overview of available positioning techniques.

And among the topics that are discussed, Classification of Positioning system, Global

Positioning System; Cell of Origin /Cell ID Positioning, system, and finally Indoor

Positioning System.

The third chapter, reports on the methods employed to develop the

positioning system and the methodology, in which the methods employed and the

soft wares needed for this project are explained.

The fourth chapter presents the result and discussion of implementation of

equipment tracking and security system based on WLAN indoor location tracking.

The topics discussed are positioning system program requirement, program

functionality and finally program implementation.

The fifth chapter, studies the properties of WLAN based-Indoor location

tracking system in terms of accuracy based on the signal strength of the wireless

network.

In the sixth chapter, are the conclusion and discussion of future works that

can be carried out is presented.