Skip to main content
    Details
    Author(s)
    Display Name
    Gerrit Maus
    Affiliation
    Affiliation
    Universität Wuppertal
    Display Name
    Dieter Brückmann
    Affiliation
    Affiliation
    Universität Wuppertal
    Abstract

    The use of off-the-shelf wireless hardware for the purpose of ambient sensing is usually referred to as wireless sensing. Typical applications include indoor localization or human behaviour recognition. However, due to several limitations of commodity hardware, precise ranging as with radar systems has not been described so far. The support for Direction Finding in recent versions of the Bluetooth Core Specification now enables fine-grained measurements of wireless signals as it has not been the case with off-the-shelf hardware before. Combining a phase calibration technique with a custom Bluetooth 5.1 sensor device, we present a fully-functional stepped frequency radar system that can be built solely from commercially-available chipsets. This system is capable of resolving both the direction and the path length of a reflected signal. The proposed radar approach was evaluated by estimating the distance to a reflector placed under a certain angle in an experimental setup. Using 80 frequency steps and a total bandwidth of 80 MHz, it was found that the reflection path with a length of up to more than 12 m could be estimated with an average accuracy of just 28 cm.