Location Awareness

802.15.4 Realtime Location Capabilities

The ability to wirelessly sense the accurate location of an object enables a rich set of location-based applications.  Dust Networks has combined its Eterna™-enabled 802.15.4 standards-based mesh technology with time-of-flight (TOF) measurements over multiple channels to enable a new location technology we call Time Synchronized Position Time-of-flight (TSPT). TSPT combines the best attributes of Wireless Sensor Networking (WSN) with the best of location technologies.

Key features include:

Feature Benefit

Location Accuracy

Location accuracy within 3 meters, indoors and outdoors
No wires  Every mote can run on batteries or harvested energy. Installations are quick, simple and non-disruptive

No site survey

The self-forming, self-healing mesh infrastructure channel hops, and the mesh connectivity automatically adapts as the RF environment changes

No special deployment skills 

The network forms automatically and no field wireless expertise is needed.


In a TSPT location network, the Location Engine, which runs on a PC or server, computes the location of a node based on measurements between the mobile node and several fixed nodes over multiple channels. Sensor and location data is readily available to any application, allowing developers to easily combine information about where an object is with information about how  the object is.

Location Engine Functionality