Expanding Golioth Location with Gateway-Based Positioning
We recently announced the general availability of Golioth Location, a comprehensive device positioning service. Less than two weeks later, we have expanded the service to support gateway-based positioning, making it possible to obtain the location of devices that do not have GNSS, cellular, or Wi-Fi capabilities. This is accomplished by resolving the location of an indirectly connected device by the known location of the gateway that delivered data to Golioth on its behalf.
We previously defined the distinction between devices and gateways in The Taxonomy of Connected Device Networks. Gateways deliver data to Golioth, typically over cellular, Wi-Fi, or Ethernet, on behalf of other devices. This is enabled by pouch, a custom protocol we developed that enables devices that can’t communicate directly with cloud services to deliver data via an intermediary (i.e. gateway). One of the most common use cases is Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) devices, which can deliver encrypted “pouches” to a gateway, such as a mobile application on a user’s smartphone or an embedded Linux-based single-board computer (SBC), which can then be forwarded along to Golioth over Wi-Fi or cellular. Golioth customers in our Bluetooth-to-Cloud private access program are using this functionality today.
Gateways can leverage Golioth Location’s network-based positioning to resolve their location from scanned Wi-Fi access points or nearby cell towers, or, if they are equipped with GNSS capabilities, can obtain their own position and deliver it to Golioth Location for tracking. Because edge devices must be in relatively close proximity to a gateway in order to communicate through it, Golioth Location is able to approximate the location of the device over time based on the gateways that deliver data on its behalf, regardless of how the gateway obtained its own location.
