Designed for integration into commercial end products, U-Blox provides low-power, high-precision indoor positioning and speeds the testing, evaluation and commercialization of Bluetooth direction finding and indoor positioning solutions. U-blox Ant-B10 antenna board for Bluetooth direction finding and indoor positioning applications has been released.
The product is a freestanding Bluetooth low power antenna plate for direction finding and indoor positioning. The board provides an antenna array consisting of eight separate patch antennas, built around the Nina-B411 Bluetooth 5.1 module. After processing the incoming RF signal from the mobile tracker tag in the module's radio and Angle calculation processor, the board outputs the calculated AoA without any additional processing.
This release also includes the XPLR-AOA-3 browser suite. It provides an application board that provides developers with a quick and easy way to evaluate and test antenna boards and companies' direction finding algorithms. Off-the-shelf rows of pins on the application board make it easy to start and test equipment and third party antenna boards. Connecting the two plates provides ready-to-use AoA indoor positioning anchors in seconds.
The ANT-B10 and XPLR-AOA-3 complement current indoor positioning products, including the popular XPLR-AOA-1 and XPLR-AOA-2 kits. Using u-connectLocate running on the ANT-B10 Bluetooth module, solution developers can quickly execute angle calculation algorithms using AT commands. Once combined, the solution suite is ready for final product integration.
Everyday use cases for Bluetooth indoor positioning and orientation include tracking assets in industrial environments, such as warehouses, hospitals, retail environments, or objects in museums. In addition, access control systems deployed in connected buildings can use Angle detection to determine which side of the door the user is on.
Mika Jasberg, Vp of CoreHW Components said:"We are excited to be part of such an excellent all-round indoor positioning solution. U-blox has really demonstrated its commitment to lowering the barriers to entry for Bluetooth indoor location solutions and promoting the technology, "
Giorgos Marakis, Product strategy, U-Blox Short-range Radios said:"With the introduction of the Ant-B10 and XPLr-AOA-3 kits, we are excited to offer a complete U-Blox RADIo-to-cloud solution for Bluetooth-based indoor positioning and direction finding. The solution allows developers to benefit from our in-house expertise in angular computation and multipath suppression, resulting in savings in development costs and reduced time-to-market, "
