White Paper
Cisco Hyperlocation Solution
Unlock New Business Value Through
More Accurate Context
White Paper
Table of Contents
Executive Summary
3
It’s All About Context
3
Elements of Location
4
Cisco Hyperlocation Solution
4
Hyperlocation Technology with Angle of Arrival
5
Hyperlocation Module with Advanced Security
6
Integrated BLE Support
6
A Field-Upgradable Solution
6
Hyperlocation + Cisco CMX: A Powerful Combination
6
The Hyperlocation Advantage
© 2016 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
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Executive Summary
Businesses in virtually every industry are using location data to
better understand their customers and users. By knowing how
people move through and interact with a venue, businesses
can gain valuable insights to optimize their locations and
engage customers at the point of decision. However,
contextual customer information is only as valuable as its
accuracy. And when it comes to capitalizing on location data,
a meter is worth more than a kilometer.
The Cisco® Hyperlocation Solution is the industry’s first WiFi network-based location system that can help businesses
and users pinpoint a user’s location to within one to three
meters, depending on the deployment. Combining innovative
RF antenna and module design, faster and more frequent
data processing, and a powerful platform for customer
engagement, it can help businesses create more personalized
and profitable customer experiences.
It’s All About Context
For modern businesses, context is everything. Whether
in retail, healthcare, hospitality, or other industries,
understanding the full context of your customers’ or users’
experiences is key to achieving positive business outcomes.
Location is essential context. To take a simple example,
a half-off special on cappuccinos is highly relevant to a
customer when she’s walking past the cafe. It is useless if
she’s in a different state.
Starting from this basic principle, businesses in many
industries are using indoor Wi-Fi to power location-based
services and gain deeper insight into their customers and
users. Location services provide critical context in two ways:
• In-depth analytics: First, location allows you to better
understand what people are doing in a space, both in
real time and historically. Applying behavioral analytics to
location data collected from customer smartphones shows
you how people flow through your business, where they
spend the most time, peak hours, and more.
• Personalized engagement: Second, having accurate
location data means you can provide critical context-driven
information (targeted offers, product reviews, maps, or
other assistance) at an actionable moment. Conversations
with several Cisco customers indicate that as much
as 70 percent of shoppers use their mobile devices
while in terminals, shopping malls, sports stadiums, and
other indoor public spaces. That means there’s a huge
opportunity to influence purchasing decisions by providing
tailored information at the right place and time.
Businesses are already tapping into the value of location data
to power new customer experiences for a wide range of
applications:
• Retail: Push real-time messages to customers at the point
of decision—such as discounts or product reviews for the
© 2016 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
specific aisle or store location that a customer is browsing.
And gain deeper insight into traffic patterns (aisle-level
customer flow, average dwell times, and more) to set
prices for premium shelf locations or, for a mall, premium
store locations.
• Healthcare: Track the location of clinicians and medical
equipment down to room-level accuracy. And automatically
push patient-specific information to caregivers based on
which room they’re in, or even which bed within a room
they’re attending.
• Hospitality: Use “wayfinding” applications to provide
guests with interactive maps of hotels, convention centers,
or other venues to help them find what they’re looking
for faster. And use these applications to advertise nearby
invenue services.
• Convention centers: Provide sub-booth-level accuracy
and associated services. For example, a car show could
show information for a specific model within the booth.
Services and advertisements can be delivered based on
location. And customers and colleagues can find each
other on the trade show floor.
• Shopping malls: Provide digital concierge services for the
location. Allow parents to track their children. Deliver video
and content based on location.
These are just a few examples. Virtually any venue serving
people—local government service centers, college campuses,
museums, even enterprise workspaces—can benefit from
contextual location data. However, the value of location
information is directly tied to its accuracy.
From an analytics perspective, seeing how customers
flow through a grocery store is useful information. Roughly
knowing how long they pause at specific shelves and endcaps
is even more useful. From an engagement perspective,
providing a list of storewide discounts when customers walk
through the door is useful. Being able to push out reviews
and targeted offers for products the customer is currently
looking at—instead of what he was looking at two minutes
ago—is even more powerful. In short, the more accurate the
location context you collect, the greater your ability to harness
that information to increase revenues, improve customer
experiences, and gain a competitive edge.
Using new received signal strength indication (RSSI) and
angle-of-arrival technology, Cisco can give you the most
accurate wireless location information in the industry with
the Cisco Hyperlocation Solution. And we can do it with
the Cisco Aironet® 3600 and 3700 Series wireless access
points you may already have deployed. Combining Cisco
Hyperlocation Solution technology with Cisco Connected
Mobile Experiences (CMX), you can capitalize on faster,
more accurate location data to achieve amazing
business outcomes.
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Elements of Location
To understand the value that location can provide, it’s important
to define exactly what location is. To capitalize on contextual
customer information, you need wireless location data that is:
• Spatially accurate: The value of context is tied to its
granularity. You want to know as precisely as possible
where a customer is when his or her presence is tracked.
Bringing location granularity down from a 30-foot range
opens up a world of new behavioral analytics and customer
engagements that you can support. But when targeting
product-specific information in a retail space, powering
wayfinding applications, or identifying the most useful
behavioral analytics, pinpointing location to within 1 to 3
meters can be even more valuable.
• Current: Accuracy is also dictated by the amount of data
collected. The more frequently location data is refreshed,
the more comprehensive your analytics will be, and the
more personalized and relevant your engagement efforts.
If your location system updates just once or twice per
minute, the possibilities for engagement are more limited.
Think about the last time you walked through a store. In 60
seconds, you could be in an entirely different department.
• Actionable: The overall latency of the system also
affects accuracy. The time it takes to collect location
information, process it, and return a result adds to the
delay between knowing where a customer is and taking
action to engage him.
How you collect location information—based on how your
users and customers are connecting—matters as well.
Businesses have historically used two mechanisms to collect
location information from customers’ mobile devices: probing
clients (tracking pings that mobile devices generate to check
for available Wi-Fi networks), and triangulating location based
on continuous connectivity to the venue’s Wi-Fi network.
Naturally, businesses can collect more valuable context from
customers who are associated with the network (logged in
to Wi-Fi in the venue). Additionally, when many customers
in a venue are not associated, they create a constant stream
of “chatter” as their devices continually probe the network,
taxing the available Wi-Fi bandwidth.
© 2016 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
It’s also important to note that the probe-based location
technology is driven by the needs of the apps and services on
the customer’s device. Wi-Fi network-based location services
are controlled by the venue, and thus offer much greater
flexibility to generate value for the venue operator.
In general, businesses get more value from location services
when they encourage customers to connect. They gain much
more accurate location information and a better experience
for customers.
Cisco Hyperlocation Solution
Recognizing the need for more granular, current, and
actionable location data, Cisco has developed the Cisco
Hyperlocation Solution. With innovative new RF antenna and
Cisco wireless module technology, businesses gain much
faster and more frequently updated location information, and
Wi-Fi accuracy to within 1 to 3 meters for the first time.
The Cisco Hyperlocation Solution encompasses:
• New technology: Next-generation location technology
provides a customer’s angle-of-arrival (AoA) and location
accuracy within one to three meters for associated clients,
depending on the deployment.
• New module: You can activate hyperlocation capabilities
with a field-upgradable module for Cisco Aironet 3600
and 3700 Series access points—and dramatically improve
location accuracy using the Wi-Fi footprint you already
have deployed. The solution includes a snap-around
circular antenna and plug-in module upgrade with
integrated Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacon technology.
• New services: The Cisco Hyperlocation module is the
next generation of the Cisco Wireless Services Module
(WiSM). It combines the latest location-based services
with advanced Cisco wireless security and Cisco CleanAir®
technology to make Wi-Fi networks more secure, more
cost-effective, and easier to deploy and manage.
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The following sections describe these elements in more detail.
This can provide value, but for the most powerful
applications—such as pushing timely messages about
specific products a customer is browsing, or providing
wayfinding applications that accurately reflect how a
user is moving through a space—it’s often too slow.
Cisco FastLocate technology, initially introduced in
previous-generation Cisco WiSMs, doubled that refresh
rate for clients associated with the Wi-Fi network. The
enhanced FastLocate technology embedded in the Cisco
Hyperlocation Solution now accelerates the refresh cycle
even further, updating the location of associated clients
as often as every six seconds depending on deployment.
Businesses gain a much clearer picture of how customers
are moving through and interacting with a space, both
historically and in real time.
Hyperlocation Technology with Angle of Arrival
Conventional location services identify a client’s location
using technology. RSSI triangulates location by measuring the
signal strength of the client’s connection between three or
more access points and returns a result within an accuracy
of 7 meters.
The Cisco Hyperlocation Solution uses an innovative RF
antenna design based on military technology used to pinpoint
the angle of arrival of flying objects and radio signals. This
technology has been used in the military for decades but
historically required massive antenna arrays spanning
hundreds of meters in diameter. Cisco engineers have
miniaturized this design to operate at Wi-Fi frequencies, and
can now deliver the same real-time angle of arrival capability
in a 12-inch antenna that can be easily installed over existing
Aironet access points (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Cisco Innovation in RF and Antenna Design
12 in
The Cisco Hyperlocation Solution also includes:
• Enhanced Cisco FastLocate technology: Conventional
RSSI-based location services use client Wi-Fi probes to
update location one to two times per minute.
Figure 2. The Power of Hyperlocation
Accurate Data
Before
7 meters
After
1-3 meters
© 2016 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
• Superior system latency: Even if a system refreshes more
frequently, location data will quickly become inaccurate
if the overall latency of the system is too slow. For many
location systems, initial system latency is between 20-30
seconds when a device is first acquired. Latency can drop
to 15-20 seconds for subsequent updates. CMX 10.X
decreases overall latency and, with client side application,
updates can be as frequent as 10-15 seconds. That
means that businesses now have the power to detect the
precise location of a customer or user in a space and take
faster action based on that context.
With this unique combination of capabilities—innovative angleof-arrival detection, enhanced FastLocate, and reduced
system latency—the Cisco Hyperlocation Solution can calculate
location and angle of arrival within 1 to 3 meters for associated
clients. For nonassociated clients, the access points can
continue to provide accuracy within 5 to 7 meters using RSSI.
In an optimized deployment, this represents a huge difference
for location services, narrowing down a connected user’s
location from as much as a 23-foot margin of error to within
3-10 feet. That level of accuracy can power a new generation
of behavioral analytics and engagement applications—for
example, even allowing retail businesses to detect a shopper’s
behavior at the level of an individual aisle shelf (Figure 2).
More Data
Before
1-2 updates per minute
After
up to10 updates per minute
Actionable Data
Before
20-30 sec system latency
After
10-15 sec
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Hyperlocation Module with Advanced Security
The Cisco Hyperlocation Solution module is the next
generation of the Cisco Wireless Security Module. It combines
data connectivity, spectrum analysis, and security threat
detection and mitigation into a single, multipurpose access
point. This includes:
Hyperlocation + Cisco CMX: A Powerful Combination
Hyperlocation provides critical context about your customers
and users to inform more valuable analytics and higherimpact customer engagement. Combined with Cisco CMX,
hyperlocation enables you to launch a new generation of venueand industry-specific applications to capitalize on this context.
• Cisco CleanAir technology to monitor for and correct
spectrum interference
Cisco CMX provides a unified, easy-to-manage platform to:
• Cisco Wireless Intrusion Prevention System (wIPS)
scanning to detect network attacks and malicious behavior
• Tools to detect and block rogue access points
• Radio resource management (RRM) intelligence that
collects RF metrics for noise, interference, and load
to automatically optimize connections and simplify
deployments
• Provide simplified Wi-Fi access with a custom captive portal
• Collect analytics and reporting to understand how people
are using your environment and optimize their experience
• Connect in-venue mobile services with social networks
• Engage your customers and users with fine-tuned,
personalized content such as push notifications, wayfinding
services, and more
The previous-generation WiSM provided these capabilities
over traditional 802.11a/b/n networks, using the 20-MHz
radio band. The Cisco Hyperlocation module brings all of them
to new, high-bandwidth 802.11ac Wi-Fi networks as well,
and operates on the 20-, 40-, and 80-MHz radio bands.
And you can expand your context-driven capabilities through
our ecosystem of Cisco CMX partners, who can provide
customized and industry-specific analytics and engagement
applications to deliver a new world of mobile experiences to
create business value.
Integrated BLE Support
The Cisco Hyperlocation Solution module also includes builtin
support for BLE beacons that can trigger customer or user
engagements at specific places. (For example, a BLE beacon
positioned near a specific museum installation could trigger
the guest’s smartphone app to launch virtual docent content
for that exhibit. Or a BLE beacon at the entrance to a medical
campus could recognize a returning patient and launch a
wayfinding app to direct them to their doctor appointment.)
The Hyperlocation Advantage
Each Hyperlocation access point can support up to five
different BLE beacons, each with a different universally unique
identifier (UUID), power, and update frequency. So even if
you’re already using BLE beacons in your venue, you can
integrate them into your unified Cisco Wi-Fi and location
system and make them easier to power, manage, and update.
Unlike BLE tags, Cisco Hyperlocation BLE is network powered
and managed.
• Transformative Wi-Fi innovation, with location context that
is more accurate (to better understand customer behavior),
more current and comprehensive (to better identify
movement patterns), and more actionable (to gain realtime
insights for customer engagement)
A Field-Upgradable Solution
The Cisco Hyperlocation Solution is also designed to protect
your existing investments. You can deploy all of these advanced
capabilities with the Cisco Aironet 3600 or 3700 Series
access point footprint you have now simply by snapping on
the enhanced antennas and plugging in the new modules.
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San Jose, CA
Businesses in almost every industry are already using location
to gain invaluable context about their customers and users,
supporting unique applications that improve user experiences
and produce better business outcomes. With the ability to
collect and act on accurate location data from 1 to 3 meters,
the possibilities are limited only by the imagination.
With the Cisco Hyperlocation Solution, you can realize:
• Better location accuracy with 1 to 3 meter accuracy,
depending on deployment
• More useful location information, with improved accuracy,
increased refresh rate, and reduced latency
• Investment protection with a modular, field-upgradable
solution that supports your existing Cisco Aironet 3600 or
3700 Series access points and BLE infrastructure
To learn more, visit www.cisco.com/go/hyperlocation.
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