march2021 - 18

COVER STORY

Tracking Advancements
The cargo industry had high hopes that radio
frequency identification (RFID) technology
could assist with ULD location services in
the same way it has assisted with passenger
baggage tracking.
But, according to Rogers, RFID ultimately
never became a viable option - in part because
of the cost and infrastructure needed to
deploy it.
" You need an awful lot of physical infrastructure in the form of scanners, " he says,
noting range and frequency of the scanners
caused issues. " The frequencies that give the
biggest range are the ones that are not acceptable for use in an airport ramp because of
interference with other radio transmissions,
and the frequencies that are acceptable on a
ramp have a range of about three feet. You'd be
practically standing on top of the pallet before
you could identify it with RFID. "
Arnd Trapp, director of IT at Jettainer,
adds that global positioning systems (GPS)
and global system for mobile communications
(GSM) networks are other examples of technology that did not transfer to ULDs well.
" The main reason why these technologies
have not been convincing is that the power
Photo courtesy of Fraport

" The apron is then the greatest challenge, "
he continues. " You depend on transport, but
you do not know whether ULDs on dollies
will be parked somewhere else than originally
planned. Then there are the safety regulations
in aircraft regarding communication and the
lack of energy for the transmission of data. "
Efficiently managing a container and
pallet fleet requires a high level of accuracy
and transparency, according to Martijn van
Geest, managing director of digital solutions
at Unilode.
" Both airlines and ULD management providers are faced with the challenges of data
quality and delivery as they depend on data
provided by third parties outside of their
organization, " van Geest says. " This process
usually has a low level of automation that
negatively affects the data quality, and this is
one of the key areas where ULD trackers can
help as they decrease manual and error-prone
data entry, which results in more accurate and
immediately accessible data. "
ULD tracking, and the resulting efficiency gains, also enables ULD managers to
use fewer units and thereby saves significant
costs for airline customers.

18 GROUND SUPPORT WORLDWIDE

MARCH 2021

supply cannot be guaranteed for a sufficiently
long period of time, " he says.
" Generally speaking, power consumption,
in particular, is a major challenge for tracking technology, " Trapp continues. " ULDs are
normally in constant circulation and are only
sent for repair if they are damaged, so the
batteries have to be very durable. Taking the
ULDs out of circulation at short intervals to
change the batteries is not a viable option with
our fleet size of 100,000 units. "
According to Rogers, Bluetooth Low
Energy (BLE) - which previously had been
applied to tagging air mail, has begun being
used to tag ULDs. Meanwhile, companies like
Sigfox have started utilizing unused bandwidth from mobile phone networks to assist
in tracking cargo containers.
" They both have their pros and they both
have their cons. BLE is simple in that you
have to put readers in. The readers can read
up to something in the range of 50 meters,
but it's growing all the time. There's even this
thing called BLE Mesh, where the tags talk to
each other and finally reach a reader, " Rogers
says. " The interesting thing on both of these,
particularly BLE, is Bluetooth is consumer
electronics. So, it's growing at a huge pace
and its cost is constantly being driven down. "
Wendorff adds that BLE is currently the
only medium that can transmit information
over a short distance in such a way that no
extremely expensive antennas are necessary
for detection.
The development of the Internet of Things
(IoT) and the possibilities of active tracking
provides a huge field of new opportunities.
" The key however is the transparent and
smart use of available data, " Trapp points out.
" Based on our high-quality data and the use
of artificial intelligence, we have developed a
decision support system for our steering and
control solutions. This enables us to understand ULD movements better and predict
ULD imbalances to act rather than react. "
With the spread of IoT, and with it the
combination of different data, tracking ULDs
at reasonable costs is possible, Wendorff adds.
" The possibility of localizing dollies plays a
particularly important role for us, " he points
out. " We are now increasingly relying on the
combination of process data and telemetry
data. Manual entries are almost only used for
confirmation. We use the fact that a ULD -

march2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of march2021