Assets’ tracking has become a major area of interest and development in business over recent years. With businesses becoming increasingly mobile and with the development of GSM, GPS and GPRS technology, mobile assets’ tracking has come to the forefront of this field.

Tracking goods can be a very difficult business, the harsh environment of constant vibrations, varying temperatures and humidity and the need for long term reliable operation without constant maintanence present many challanges to the designers of tracking devices especially in the industrial field.

An assets tracking system usually consists of some form of base station which has some form of wireless communications link and a processing module to collect and decode the information it receives. This data can come from a variety of mobile devices, but commonly information is transmitted from a hand held barcode reader device which scans items, then sends the appropriate information to the central communications unit.

Widely used in the haulage and courier industries for tracking the contents of Lorries and vans to give details about deliveries including the product delivered times and places of delivery.

The various different application of such devices change the type of battery which is suited to the corresponding device. Standard in car type systems or those which have access to a constant power source can take advantage of rechargeable technology. Previously NiCd or NiMH batteries have been used for such applications, but due to the increasing complexity of these devices, the power requirements have also increased. NiCd and NiMH can become subject to such high demand and use and their performance can diminish quickly. The advent of Lithium technology, specifically rechargeable Lithium Ion technology has increased the capacity and reliability of rechargeable cells. This is the technology now being utilised by manufacturers of mobile assets tracking systems for such applications.

When looking at industrial tracking applications rechargeable technology is not really an option, the need for long term stand alone use means that the high self discharge characteristics and relatively low capacity mean that primary technology must be used, and the only real answer is primary Lithium Technology. Bobbin Type Lithium Thionyl Chloride batteries proved to be the best suited chemistry for this application, a cell technology Tadiran batteries excel in. Their high energy density high capacity, low self discharge rates, excellent safety characteristics and extended temperature range make them the ideal choice. These cells are ideal for low current draw stand by applications which is how the tracking device operates for most of the time, however, when the device is transmitting or receiving information often using GSM, high current pulses are needed, to accomodate this Tadiran batteries have developd a hermetically sealed hybrid layer capacitor (HLC) which handles these pulses enabling the cell voltage to remain high throughout operation.

For more information on Industrial Asset Tracking check out this news article from GPS world.
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