an antenna board with a NINA-B411 Bluetooth LE module (Figure 7). The tag is built around a NINA-B406 Bluetooth module and includes software to send out Bluetooth 5.1 advertisement messages. The antenna board is designed to receive the messages and apply an angle calculation algorithm to determine the direction of the tag. The angles are calculated in two dimensions using the array of antennas on the board. The flexibility of the XPLR-AOA-1 kit enables designers to explore a variety of applications, such as: ■ Detecting if an object is approaching a door ■ Enabling a camera to follow an asset moving in a room ■ Tracking goods passing through a gate or past a specific position ■ Avoiding collisions between robots or automated guided vehicles
In addition, a more complex positioning system can be created using several XPLR-AOA-1 kits and triangulating the directions from three or more antenna boards. Summary Bluetooth AoA and AoD can provide accurate and cost-effective RTLS implementations for Industry 4.0. Designers who can select from SoCs and modules that include the software needed to quickly implement the complex software required to deploy Bluetooth AoA and AoD. These SoCs and modules are optimized for low power consumption to support battery-powered location tags and are designed to operate in harsh industrial environments.
Figure 5: NINA-B41x series modules support compact RTLS solutions that
use external antennas Image source: DigiKey
5.1 modes, including AoA and AoD, these modules support 802.15.4 (Thread and Zigbee) and Nordic proprietary 2.4 GHz protocols, enabling designers to standardize on a single module for a wide range of IoT device designs. To speed time to market, designers can use the XPLR-AOA-1 explorer kit from u-blox that allows experimentation with the Bluetooth 5.1 direction-finding feature and support for AoA and AoD functions. This explorer kit includes a tag and
Figure 7: The XPLR-AOA-1 explorer kit includes a tag (left) and an antenna board (right) to support evaluation of Bluetooth AoA and AoD. Image source: u-blox
Figure 6: AoA and AoD applications that benefit from an integrated antenna can use the NINA-B40x series modules. Image source: DigiKey
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