In today’s fast-paced world, managers are constantly forced to take action, to make fast decisions. Their ability to make good decisions is directly influenced by the availability of accurate and complete information at the right time.

Over the past decade, enterprises have spent hundreds of millions of dollars in enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems in order to organize and automate the enterprise information flow, with the goal of delivering relevant information to managers. However, there is still a gap - the "last mile" to physical world objects that has not been connected and automated. As a result, managers are missing crucial, real-time information. The challenge is to connect the entire supply chain with a cost effective solution.

The current approach

Radio frequency identification (RFID) was the first technology that attempted to solve the problem of managing physical assets. However, RFID failed to solve the challenge of implementing bi-directional communications - the standard telecom approach to network architecture – while preserving the edge device’s ("tag" or agent) battery life. As a result, common technology offers only one way communication networks, which are not secured and less reliable (messages are never acknowledged). These networks rely on placing all the intelligence in the reader, an approach that requires a dense and costly infrastructure and cabling in order to provide reasonable location information. Furthermore, in a one way communication network objects can only send status information, but cannot receive instructions or take proactive decisions – all of which are contradictory to the core concept of sustainable networking technologies.

The Precyse solution

Precyse has developed a patented network technology – N3 – to meet the challenge of creating secure, bi-directional asset networks that enable long battery life and a compelling business model. With N3, Precyse delivers a last-mile communication platform connecting assets and personnel to a network, enabling true real time asset visibility for enlightened business decisions. This unique system saves customers significant time and money by allowing them to deploy easy-to-install technology in a cost-effective way in order to manage assets.

N3 Benefits

Much like CDMA for mobile phones, N3 is a synchronous, bi-directional network protocol that was developed with asset communication needs at mind. The N3 core competences are derived from the protocol’s unique bi-directional communications architecture. Why is that great? Because it enables us to:

• Use wireless data security (time-stamped AES128 with encryption key exchange).
• Locate Smart Agents using low cost – no wires needed beacons, instead of expensive readers and, with greater location accuracy.
• No periodic transmission - Agents transmit only when required and only once.
• To have tens of thousands of Agents without interferences
• Offer user- initiated operations: locate, measure, activate – control.
• Reliability – every message is acknowledged!
• A single network protocol to support
  • Agent communications, base station and beacon infrastructure wireless monitoring and configuration
  • Many applications under a unified asset network: wireless sensors, push-button and key pad applications, machine to machine communication and much more.