Chapter 14

Measuring RTLS Performance

In This Chapter

Understanding metrics

Knowing the quality of the end-user experience

Measuring operational functionality

Establishing objectives for your application

When you measure performance, you identify the difference between what you’ve planned and what actually happens. Monitoring and measuring the performance of an RTLS can be challenging, especially with all the tags, location sensors, technology intricacies, and interdependencies within your organization’s infrastructure. There’s a lot to keep track of.

This chapter describes the performance aspects you need to monitor and measure in order to determine whether your RTLS is working the way you need it to work.

Defining the Metrics

Having the right performance metrics — in this case, a list of performance benchmarks you want to measure — helps you monitor and manage the performance of the RTLS and the application associated with it. Metrics also help you manage how end users are using the application. With the right performance metrics, you can monitor the inner workings of your RTLS closely enough to ensure performance improvements.

Think of the metrics as your scoreboard. For example, if the objective was to reduce losing assets, the number of assets lost per year is a good metric. If the objective was to find assets, average and median time to find an asset are good metrics. And, along with this set of indicators that directly correlate to your application objective, you may want ...

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