Can the omlox Standard Unlock the Potential of UWB in RTLS Applications?

Manufacturing enterprises are facing a number of difficult challenges and are turning toward Real-Time Locating System (RTLS) solutions to help digitize their operations and remain competitive. A combination of short-range wireless connectivity technologies, including Bluetooth®, Wi-Fi, and Ultra-Wideband (UWB), among others, are helping to enable a variety of positioning-related use cases aimed at improving worker and visitor safety, reducing lost or stolen assets, eliminating production errors, automating compliance, enhancing operational efficiencies, and solving intralogistics challenges. This consists of a number of different incentives, including lone worker tracking, contact tracing, employee mustering, tool and equipment tracking, automated documentation, inventory management, and forklift route optimization, among many others. These incentives are a vital part of Industry 4.0 transformation and can help enable predictive maintenance, collaborative robotics, digital twins, and Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV) navigation, among many other vital services within the enterprise sector.

However, to date, RTLS rollouts have failed to reach their true potential. This is due to several factors, most notably technology fragmentation, fear of vendor lock-in, deployment complexity, interoperability and scalability challenges, Information Technology (IT)/Operational Technology (OT) integration challenges, and high costs. As a result, there is a growing desire to shift away from proprietary, siloed deployments to open, standards-based multi-vendor ecosystem approaches and solutions that can effectively integrate with various internal systems via open interfaces. omlox, the world’s first open locating standard, seeks to enable this, allowing enterprises to deploy their technology (or technologies) of choice into an interoperable location platform that can provide seamless access to location data, regardless of vendor or deployment environment. A growing member ecosystem, successful trial deployments, continued technology innovation, and wider ecosystem partnerships, are all indicating that omlox is playing a vital role in forging an open, interoperable RTLS ecosystem, with a particular emphasis on highly accurate UWB technology.

omlox is an open, interoperable locating standard that seeks to enable a scalable, robust, precision RTLS across a number of different market verticals. Leveraging open interfaces, the intention is to enable a flexible, universal location platform from which enterprises can deploy their technology of choice, regardless of vendor and deployment environment, and harmonize access to location data, solving some of the key implementation challenges that have plagued the market to date. The omlox project was first launched in 2018 by a consortium of industrial vendors seeking to promote developing an interoperable, scalable, and simple to deploy RTLS based on UWB technology. By 2020, this had evolved to enable a vision of an open locating standard that could integrate all wireless technologies via a standardized interface. To help achieve this, later that year, development and governance of omlox was handed over to the PROFIBUS & PROFINET International standardization body, a nonprofit association that works on developing, standardizing, and promoting industrial communication and automation technologies, including PROFIBUS, PROFINET, IO-Link, MTP, NOA, and SRCI.

omlox primarily leverages the highly accurate, low latency, and robust UWB technology that is already deployed widely in manufacturing and logistics enterprises. However, it defines an open, standardized approach to UWB, which enables leveraging devices and infrastructure from multiple vendors around the world. At the same time, acknowledging that there is no single technology that can address all RTLS use cases for both indoor and outdoor environments, omlox also supports a range of complementary positioning technologies such as Bluetooth® Low Energy (LE), Wi-Fi, 5G positioning, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), and Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), among others.

This combined approach can help streamline precision RTLS deployments within manufacturing, logistics, healthcare, and other industries, while enabling seamless integration into a single location infrastructure, giving enterprises the flexibility to expand their deployments over time, support both indoor and outdoor tracking across multiple sites, enable partnerships with their vendors of choice, and simplify integration with an existing Manufacturing Execution System (MES), Warehouse Management System (WMS), Production Planning System (PPS), and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. This can help significantly reduce the cost, complexity, risk, and deployment time associated with current RTLS deployments, help compound the Return on Investment (ROI), and enable enterprises to take advantage of a variety of essential Industry 4.0 incentives enabled by RTLS technologies.

Since its inception in 2018, numerous trials of omlox technology have proven its value, hundreds of use cases have been defined, and over the last couple of years, there has been a significant expansion in omlox membership worldwide, with over 60 partner and member companies contributing to new product development, technology innovation, and wider industry collaboration.

Meanwhile, UWB technology continues to build traction both from an RTLS and a broader market adoption standpoint. According to ABI Research, RTLS deployments leveraging UWB technology are expected to grow the fastest over the next 5 years, reaching tens of thousands of deployments, and achieving a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of over 21% between 2025 and 2030. The arrival of new UWB RTLS vendors around the world, maturity of the technology, greater chipset and module availability, performance improvements, and falling costs of the technology will all contribute to this growth. Furthermore, the ability to leverage multi-vendor solutions enabled by omlox will play a vital role in the future growth and scalability of the UWB RTLS market. Through this process, more competition will be added into the market, acting to drive down the costs of the technology, spurring adoption, as well as increasing competition to the market from a tag and infrastructure perspective.

Unsurprisingly, given omlox’s background and core zone functionality, most of its members implement UWB technology, creating a compelling ecosystem of omlox-compliant solutions on the market today. Many existing UWB RTLS solution providers and chipset vendors have already joined the omlox ecosystem, and are actively contributing to the standard via various working groups. However, importantly, there are also a growing number of solution providers deploying complementary technologies that have recently joined the omlox ecosystem. For example, in June 2024, u-blox unveiled its u-locate indoor positioning suite of solutions based on Bluetooth® LE Angle of Arrival (AoA) technology, alongside announcing its omlox membership. u-blox’s offering includes the omlox-compliant u-locateHub, the u-locateEngine positioning engine, alongside an Application Programming Interface (API) suite that enables integration with multiple vendor solutions. Meanwhile, u-blox’s expertise in the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) space can also help complement the Bluetooth® LE portfolio to enable more seamless indoor and outdoor positioning. Meanwhile, in early 2025, Bornemann AG, an omlox member, transferred its RTLS activities to Cavea GmbH, now offering a comprehensive suite of omlox-compliant RTLS hardware and software solutions consisting of a range of technologies, including GNSS, Bluetooth® LE AoA, and Wirepas mesh. Cavea’s technology, including its Wirepas mesh location solutions, will also be featured as part of the SmartFactoryOWL test bed, a collaborative, manufacturer-independent, Industry 4.0 test bed demonstrating the potential of new technologies.

Most recently, in March 2025, another significant partnership in the UWB RTLS ecosystem was formed between omlox and the FiRa Consortium. This announced the creation of a joint working group to ensure coexistence and interoperability when UWB technology is used in hybrid public-private spaces. The intention is to anticipate coexistence issues between omlox and FiRa-related use cases, while they identified that a key long-term goal of the collaboration is to integrate functionalities developed by FiRa into the omlox core zone. This will help enable both reliable and precise tracking of specialized assets, while also enabling smartphone users to navigate indoor spaces and interact with these assets accurately. This is a critical next step in ensuring wider UWB interoperability across multiple ecosystems and will benefit both fine-ranging and RTLS-related use cases in the years to come. Furthermore, the wider UWB developments from the FiRa Consortium, UWB Alliance, IEEE, CCC, Aliro, emergence of new UWB solution providers, increased adoption in smartphones, and the maturity of the UWB hardware and standards market will also help spur on UWB technology adoption in the coming years.

Over the last few years, the omlox ecosystem has grown significantly. While UWB unsurprisingly dominates the ecosystem, solutions from different parts of the location value chain across multiple technologies, as well as different regions, are increasingly seeing the value in contributing toward an open locating ecosystem to help reduce friction for enterprises looking to invest in digital transformation. As omlox is an open standard, members across the value chain can contribute to different working groups to help define future use cases and drive innovation within the omlox core zone, bringing further innovations to UWB RTLS technology. With the continued evolution of omlox technology, new vendors, members, and partners contributing to the omlox ecosystem, and a robust certification process, the omlox locating standard is well on the way to forging the path toward an open, interoperable RTLS ecosystem. For more information on omlox, please download ABI Research’s recent whitepaper, How omlox Is Forging the Path Toward an Open, Interoperable RTLS Ecosystem.