
Ever wished for an indoor GPS that was not only pinpoint accurate but also smart enough to tell you how your spaces are actually being used? Thanks to Juniper, that future is here. By combining the power of Ultra-Wideband (UWB), Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), and artificial intelligence (AI), companies can now access a level of indoor location accuracy and analytics that was previously impossible or just incredibly expensive. This powerful combination doesn’t just show you a blue dot on a map. It provides the deep, actionable insights needed to optimize operations, enhance user experiences, and make smarter business decisions. As outlined at Mobility Field Day 13, Juniper really has put together a winning team of technologies.
The Foundation of Precision: Ultra-Wideband (UWB)
The first challenge is achieving incredible accuracy, and that’s where UWB comes in. Think of it as the high-precision receiver for your indoor GPS. Integrated into cutting-edge hardware like Juniper’s Wi-Fi 7 enabled AP47 access point, UWB provides location data that is orders of magnitude better than older methods.
How accurate? We’re talking half-meter accuracy, 95% of the time. This precision is critical for foundational tasks like the auto-placement of APs. The system knows almost exactly where each AP is located, which is critical for accurate location services. UWB also plays a key role in augmenting GPS where signals can’t reach, such as inside high-rise buildings, ensuring consistent location awareness. This creates a reliable, high-fidelity map on which all other services can be built.
The Versatile Network: Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)
While UWB provides the precision, BLE delivers versatility. It’s the flexible network of sensors that tracks a wide range of devices and enables direct engagement with people inside a venue. Since UWB is relatively new, you still need a way to account for devices that aren’t running the latest and greatest chipsets. Juniper APs incorporate dual BLE radios to power a variety of use cases, including:
- User Engagement: Powering wayfinding apps, sending promotional alerts to a shopper’s phone in a specific aisle, or providing local inventory information.
- Asset Visibility: Tracking the location of valuable equipment in a hospital or warehouse. If you’ve ever dealt with staff that likes to hoard wheelchairs or the inevitable missing pallet jack, you know exactly how important this technology can be.
- People Visibility: Ensuring staff safety by monitoring employee badges or tracking a technician’s location.
To boost BLE’s accuracy, unsupervised machine learning is used to constantly calculate and refine the Path Loss Formula (PLF), ensuring that location data for tags and badges is as precise as possible. This allows businesses to track everything from dedicated asset tags to the passive BLE signals from visitors’ smartphones, all on the same infrastructure. Software enhancements ensure that the dreaded “wandering blue dot” syndrome is lessened, if not completely eliminated. You may not need to know where someone or something is down to the inch with BLE, but you can get close enough to get eyes on it.
The Brains of the Operation: Artificial Intelligence (AI)
If UWB is the precision receiver and BLE is the versatile sensor network, then AI is the intelligent assistant that makes sense of it all. AI, including machine learning and computer vision, acts as the analysis layer that automates complex tasks and transforms raw data into strategic insights.
Here’s how AI enhances the whole system:
- Location-Aware AI Ops: Setting up a network is simplified with auto-placement and auto-orientation. Just upload a floor plan, and AI determines the optimal location and orientation for each AP’s 16-antenna array, achieving 90% accuracy in guided placements. Don’t forget to include your wall types and compositions!
- Auto Zones: This innovation uses AI computer vision to analyze a floor plan and automatically identify and label different zones, like conference rooms, ballrooms, or specific departments. This is crucial for understanding space utilization, traffic flow, and occupancy patterns. You want to have coverage for your next big stand up but also make sure you have backup options for the next salsa night that gets popular thanks to being viral on TikTok.
- Smarter Troubleshooting: The Marvis Client collects telemetry data (like OS version, battery life, and CPU usage) and pairs it with the user’s indoor location. This combined data is fed into an LLM. When a user reports a roaming issue, IT administrators can instantly see where the user was and what their device was doing at that exact moment, drastically reducing troubleshooting time without needing boots on the ground. And should the need arise to send someone to look at the issue, they will arrive with all the information needed to resolve it as quickly as possible for the user.
Stronger Together: A New Era of Analytics
The harmony emerges when UWB, BLE, and AI work in concert. UWB lays a foundation of hyper-accurate location. BLE offers a versatile way to track assets and engage with users. AI then automates deployment, refines data accuracy, and translates a constant stream of location and telemetry data into actionable intelligence.
This complete ecosystem provides invaluable insights for both IT and business operations. IT teams can perform data-driven capacity planning and analyze roaming trends to prepare for network upgrades. Meanwhile, business leaders can use the same data to optimize real estate by identifying underutilized conference rooms, improve customer experiences by analyzing foot traffic, or streamline janitorial routes based on actual occupancy data. This is the cornerstone of providing better user happiness without breaking your budget overprovisioning everything just in case the CEO or secret shopper might find a dead spot.
By combining precision, versatility, and intelligence, this trio of technologies moves businesses beyond simply knowing where things are to understanding how their spaces function and why events occur, unlocking a new era of efficiency and innovation. If you’re serious about location services and the impact they have on your business you would do well to take a look at Juniper’s offerings and help you zero in on your customers.
For more information about Juniper Networks and their location services offerings, make sure to check out their website at https://Juniper.net. To see all the videos from Mobility Field Day, make sure to check out the Tech Field Day event website.