Introduction to Bluetooth Direction Finding

Locating items or navigating indoors are functionalities with huge potential. Both have been possible with Bluetooth Low Energy for a long time using Bluetooth Beacons, but with limited accuracy. To improve accuracy and interoperability, the Bluetooth SIG introduced new features to the Bluetooth Core Specification.

Support for Direction Finding was introduced in the Bluetooth 5.1 specification. There are two major flavors, Angle of Arrival (AoA) and Angle of Departure (AoD). Both flavors provide angle information between a usually static and larger multi-antenna antenna array and a moveable single antenna unit.

Nordic added full production support for both AoA and AoD with both transmitter and receiver options in nRF Connect SDK version 2.1.1. This support can be extended to build a full Bluetooth Direction Finding solution.

0:00 Practicalities and agenda
2:05 Introduction
6:50 AoA vs AoD
11:53 The physics involved in direction finding
26:00 IQ samples and how to use them
30:00 Scope of Bluetooth specification
36:18 nRF Connect SDK samples
40:00 Supported hardware tools
41:18 Partner support
43:45 Q&A 1
1:07:29 Q&A 2

This is a recording of a webinar held on December 7, 2022.

[loveand]

Could you recommend any posts or tutorials on phase calibration that Nordic particularly suggests? In other words, how should I use the reference samples? I've come across a variety of phase calibration schemes, but none of them detail the use of reference samples. I'm sorry I'm new to this, so finding information that's useful to me is a bit challenging...Thanks !

[SumitKumar-wxrs]

Is it possible to have estimation of AoA if I have nRF52810 at transmitter side and nRF52832 at receiver side

[GaegolMaster]

Do you know any Android smartphones on the market that have reception?