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u-blox antenna board enables Bluetooth positioning indoors

Wed, Mar 16, 2022

In order to bring reliable indoor positioning devices to market, u-blox offers the ANT-B10 antenna board for Bluetooth direction finding and indoor positioning applications. The board is designed for integration into commercial end-products and enables low power, high precision indoor positioning. It also speeds up evaluation, testing and commercialisation of Bluetooth direction finding and indoor positioning solutions, said u-blox.

Bluetooth indoor positioning uses the angle of arrival (AoA) of a Bluetooth direction finding signal emitted by a mobile tag at several fixed anchor points to calculate the tag’s location in real-time with sub-meter accuracy. The technology exploits Bluetooth’s vast ecosystem and interoperability across platforms and is gaining traction due to its low cost, high accuracy and relative ease of installation and maintenance.

The ANT-B10 is a self-contained Bluetooth low energy antenna board for direction finding and indoor positioning. It has an antenna array comprising eight individual patch antennas, and is built around a u-blox NINA-B411 Bluetooth 5.1 module. After processing incoming RF signals emitted by mobile tracker tags in the module’s radio and angle calculation processor, the antenna board outputs the calculated angle of arrival without requiring any additional processes.

The release also includes the XPLR-AOA-3 explorer kit. This features an application board, which offers developers a quick and easy way to evaluate and test the ANT-B10 antenna board, as well as u-blox’s direction finding algorithm. An off-the-shelf pin header on the application board allows for easy bring-up and testing of ANT-B10 and third-party antenna boards. Connecting the two boards yields a ready-to-use AoA indoor positioning anchor point in seconds, added u-blox.

ANT-B10 and XPLR-AOA-3 complement u-blox’s indoor positioning portfolio which includes the XPLR-AOA-1 and XPLR-AOA-2 kits. Developers can use u-connectLocate, which runs on ANT-B10’s Bluetooth module, to execute the angle calculation algorithms using AT commands.

Common use cases for Bluetooth indoor positioning and direction include tracking assets in industrial settings such as in warehouses as well as people and things in hospitals, retail environments, or museums. Additionally, access control systems deployed in connected buildings can use angle detection to determine which side of a door users are located on.

To determine the angle of arrival of incoming signals for direction finding, the ANT-B10 board concurrently processes them on all eight patch antennas. Implementing multiple RF paths connected to multiple RF switches unnecessarily increases power demand and introduces errors, so the ANT-B10 board uses a single RF switch component from CoreHW that cycles through the eight antennas in microseconds.

The ANT-B10 boards are available today.

http://www.u-blox.com

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Segger partners with HPMicro for free of charge Embedded Studio for RISC-V

Tue, Mar 15, 2022

Partnering with microcontroller and embedded provider, HPMicro Semiconductor, Segger offers its Embedded Studio integrated development environment (IDE) free of charge to all HPMicro’s customers using HPM6000 series RISC-V microcontrollers.

Embedded Studio includes the tools and features for streamlined, professional embedded development in C and C++, said Segger. It comes with a powerful project manager and build system, a source code editor with code completion and folding, and a package system to install board and device support. It also includes Segger’s optimised emRun runtime and emFloat floating point libraries and its smart linker. These functions have been developed from the ground up by Segger specifically for resource-constrained embedded systems. The built-in debugger is fully integrated with J-Link, for performance and stability, added Segger.

“Our goal is to provide the best possible development solution for our RISC-V devices,” said Jintao Zeng, CEO at HPMicro. “Following an in-depth analysis of the market, we found that Segger’s Embedded Studio delivers the best results in terms of firmware size, performance and user experience”.

“Embedded Studio has been gaining a lot of popularity recently and now complements the HPMicro product families, helping software engineers unleash their full potential and shortening the time to market,” says Ivo Geilenbruegge, managing director of Segger. “Furthermore, collaboration between Segger and HPMicro will go a long way in advancing the RISC-V ecosystem in the embedded industry.”

HPMicro’s real-time RISC-V microcontroller series HPM6000 was released in December 2021 and is in full production. According to HPMicro, the flagship HPM6750 microcontroller set a new performance record of over 9000 CoreMark and 4500 DMIPS, with dual RISC-V cores running at a frequency of up to 800MHz. The HPM6000 series MCUs, including the dual-core HPM6750, the single-core HPM6450 and the entry-level HPM6120, are equipped with double-precision floating-point units and powerful DSP extension instructions. They also have built-in 2Mbyte SRAM, multimedia functions, motor control modules, communication interface and security encryption. HPM6000 has sufficient computing power to accelerate applications such as industry 4.0, smart home appliances, edge computing and the IoT.

https://www.segger.com

http://www.hpmicro.com

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HBT amplifiers provide flat gain responses for broadband

Mon, Mar 14, 2022

Two wideband gain blocks extend Guerilla RF’s portfolio, extending reach from near DC to the X band. The GRF3012 and GRF3016 wideband gain blocks target broadband applications like instrumentation, microwave backhaul, and general purpose RF and microwave amplification. Each covers multiple octaves, with frequency ranges extending from near-DC to up to 12GHz, and overall coverage extending across the HF, VHF, UHF, L, S, C and X bands.

When operating at 5GHz, the GRF3012 draws only 22mA of current while delivering 11dB of gain, 18dBm of OIP3 linearity, a compression level of 5dBm, and a noise figure of 5dB. The GRF3016 is claimed to provide enhanced linearity and compression with an increased bias level of 70mA. At its mid-band point of 5GHz, the GRF3016 provides 13.5dB of gain, 30dBm of OIP3 linearity, 16.5dBm of OP1dB compression and a low noise figure of only 4.2dB. Both components are supplied in pin-compatible 1.5 x 1.5mm, six-pin DFN packages.

According to Ryan Pratt, CEO and founder of Guerrilla RF: “The GRF3012 and GRF3016 represent the next natural progression for our growing family of broadband components. After identifying specific performance requirements within the instrumentation market, we were able to leverage our deep library of amplifier cores to create two new devices that offer an ideal blend of flat gain, linearity, compression and noise performance.”

Samples and evaluation boards are available now for the GRF3012 and GRF3016.

Guerrilla RF provides monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs) to wireless OEMs in multiple market segments – including 5G/4G macro and small cell base stations, cellular repeaters / DAS, automotive telematics such as SDARS / V2X / GPS / DAB, mission-critical military communications, navigation, and high-fidelity wireless audio.

https://www.guerrilla-rf.com

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Infineon and Sleepiz combine radar and algorithms to monitor sleep

Mon, Mar 14, 2022

To research sleep patterns and difficulties, Infineon Technologies has collaborated with Swiss digital health company, Sleepiz to offer a sleep monitoring system for use at home.

Sleep apnea, interrupted breathing, can cause daytime fatigue, as well as more difficult issues such as heart problems and diabetes. Diagnosing sleep apnea often includes observing a patient in a sleep laboratory. The two companies have collaborated to produce a sleep monitoring for use at home. The system can be integrated into any connected smart home device, from smart speakers to bed lamps. It is based on Infineon Xensiv 60GHz radar technology and Sleepiz algorithms.

According to Philipp von Schierstaedt, senior vice president and general manager Radio Frequency & Sensors at Infineon: “The Xensiv radar sensors allow the measurement of vital signs such as heartbeat and breathing rate without touching the body or intruding on privacy”.

“With Infineon’s decades of radar experience and our expertise in analysing respiratory and sleep-related diseases and disorders, we make sleep monitoring easy-to-use while delivering accurate data,” added Dr. Soumya Sunder Dash, CEO and co-founder of Sleepiz.

Understanding vital data can help millions of patients and doctors detect sleep disorders like apnea to improve sleep quality. The Xensiv 60GHz radar technology is used to collect relevant vital sign data contactless and anonymously without identifying the person. The high sensitivity of the technology means it can detect this data and sense sub-millimeter movements of the person closest to the device through various materials, such as blankets. Data is analysed with the help of machine learning (ML) algorithms from Sleepiz and stored anonymously in a cloud for the user to access.

As a medical device manufacturer Sleepiz is already selling medical sleep monitoring devices with Infineon’s radar technology to doctors in Switzerland and Germany today. Now the two companies would like to jointly revolutionise the consumer market and integrate their solution into smart speakers and other smart home devices.

Sleepiz AG was founded in 2018 by Marc Rullan, Max Sieghold and Soumya Sunder Dash as a spin-off from ETH Zürich. Sleepiz brings healthcare into homes and empowers patients to take charge of their own health. The company has developed a comfortable and cost-effective product to screen and diagnose sleep disorders like sleep apnea and to monitor patients with chronic diseases. The company has more than 50 employees across two continents and has received support from institutions like Innosuisse (Swiss Federal Innovation Agency) and the European Commission.

Infineon Technologies is one of the ten largest semiconductor companies worldwide.

http://www.sleepiz.com

http://www.infineon.com

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u-blox antenna board enables Bluetooth positioning indoors

Segger partners with HPMicro for free of charge Embedded Studio for RISC-V

HBT amplifiers provide flat gain responses for broadband

Infineon and Sleepiz combine radar and algorithms to monitor sleep

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