Bluetooth Direction Finding Solution Locates Bluetooth LE Devices With High Precision
CoreAIoT’s CoreLocation System uses Nordic nRF52833 SoC to pinpoint tags and beacons
Nordic Semiconductor today announces that CoreAIoT, a Shenzhen, China-based Internet of Things (IoT) solutions company, has selected Nordic’s nRF52833 Bluetooth 5.2/Bluetooth Low Energy (Bluetooth LE) general purpose multiprotocol System-on-Chip (SoC) to provide the core processing power and wireless connectivity for its ‘CL-GA25-P2 AoA locator’. The company claims the base locator enables accurate location finding (within 0.1-1m) of third-party devices across a wide array of markets and indoor/outdoor environments.
Using the nRF52833 SoC’s Bluetooth LE connectivity, the waterproof base locator can be wirelessly connected to third party tags and beacons, or other Bluetooth LE-enabled devices such as wearables, asset tags, mobile terminals, and smart locks. According to the company a single locator can achieve precise two-dimensional positioning using Angle-of-Arrival (AoA) technology to identify the direction of the tag/beacon signal, reducing the cost and difficulty of deployment by minimizing the number of base locators required in any given application.
Bluetooth Direction Finding features
The nRF52833’s 2.4GHz multiprotocol radio is capable of all Bluetooth Direction Finding features enabling positioning applications that not only rely on received signal strength indication (RSSI) but also signal direction. Its generous memory allocation (512kB Flash and 128 kB RAM) supports both receiver and transmitter roles for AoA and Angle-of-Departure (AoD) applications. In combination with CoreAIoT’s proprietary software, the user can navigate to any tag or beacon to a claimed accuracy of less than a meter. The nRF52833 SoC is used to control the locator’s switched antenna array, sample Bluetooth LE packets, and extract the in phase and quadrature phase information (“IQ” signal information) necessary for the AoA software’s calculations.
This data is in turn relayed from the locator to the Cloud, or the user’s Bluetooth 4.0 (and later) smartphone or tablet, from where the company’s ‘CoreLocation Positioning Assistant’ apps and WeChat Mini Programs can be used to monitor location information of wireless tags, beacons, or other Bluetooth LE devices discovered by the locator.
The Nordic nRF52833 SoC combines a 64MHz, 32-bit Arm Cortex M4 processor with floating point unit (FPU) and DSP instruction set with the multiprotocol radio (supporting Bluetooth 5.2, Bluetooth mesh, Bluetooth Direction Finding, 2Mbps throughput, and Long Range plus Thread, Zigbee, IEEE 802.15.4, and proprietary 2.4GHz RF protocol software) featuring +8dBm maximum TX power and -95dBm RX sensitivity. It is supplied with S113, S112, or S140 SoftDevices, Nordic’s Bluetooth RF protocol stacks.
RF capacity and development support
“We selected Nordic’s nRF52833 SoC for the capacity of its radio and its support for IQ sampling,” says Jing Zhou, CTO of CoreAIoT. “In addition, Nordic’s fast response times are very helpful for efficient testing and development.”
Source: Nordic Semiconductor