Open Locate Deployment Guide

Open Locate is a technology that automatically locates and places HPE Aruba Networking Access Points on a floor plan. The current landscape of Wi-Fi location solutions requires manual placement of APs on a map for any location services.  This can be time-consuming, resource-intensive, and prone to user error.  Open Locate and HPE Aruba Networking Central bring automatic placement of APs on a map, empowering workplace owners to eliminate operational bottlenecks and enhancing their overall efficiency.

The Open Locate solution introduces new technologies in the APs to produce highly accurate indoor Location Coordination Information (LCI), including the latitude, longitude, and altitude of the APs, and makes that data readily available in all network tools and applications throughout the ecosystem over standardized interfaces.

Using the Fine Timing Measurement (802.11mc) protocol, APs can determine their relative locations with the use of FTM ranging to measure the distance between each AP accurately. Support for FTM is introduced with the Wi-Fi 6 access points and available with all new access points introduced since then. GPS support is available in the Wi-Fi 6 AP-580 series and Wi-Fi 6E and newer access points. This technology makes it possible for these APs to self-locate. To explore use cases and understand how APs can auto locate themselves to enable highly-accurate indoor positioning using an emerging standard, Open Locate, watch Delivering Accurate Indoor Location Services at Scale.

To support automatic AP placement the new floorplan manager in Central will facilitate the seamless placement of APs on the floor plan.  The floorplan manager forms the foundational layer by anchoring a digital map file to geo-referenced map services thereby automatically scaling the map based on latitude and longitude coordinates.