UWB Holds Up Where Metal and Interference Defeat BLE and RFID

Ultra-wideband systems are described as markedly more resilient than signal-strength approaches such as Bluetooth Low Energy or RFID in environments with high interference or metallic obstructions. That description covers most places asset tracking is actually deployed.

Warehouses, factories and hospitals are hostile to radio in ways that a specification sheet measured in open air does not capture. Steel racking reflects signals into multipath, metal-skinned equipment creates shadows, and the same 2.4 GHz band carries Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and everything else already in the building. A positioning method that infers distance from signal strength inherits every one of those distortions as location error, and the error is not random — it is systematically worse exactly where the racking is densest and the tracking matters most.

The practical consequence for anyone evaluating a system is that a vendor accuracy figure means little without the environment attached. The number worth asking for is accuracy measured in a facility resembling yours, with the racking loaded rather than empty, because an empty warehouse and a full one are different radio environments and only one of them is the operating condition.