Silicon Labs, the global leader in enabling a more connected world with secure, smart wireless technologies, announces a new Bluetooth location-based services solution that uses precise, low-power Bluetooth devices to simplify Angle of Arrival (AoA) and Angle of Departure (AoD) Location Services. This new platform combines hardware and software to deliver industry-leading energy efficiency through Silicon Labs BG22 SiP modules and SoCs that can run for up to ten years on a single coin cell battery, as well as advanced software to track assets, improve indoor Navigate and get sub-meter tag positioning accuracy. Borda Technology was one of the first companies to adopt this new platform. Borda provides "Medical IoT" products through Real Time Location Services (RTLS) such as asset management, asset utilization, patient reception management and patient flow, patient safety and more.
Daniel Cooley, CTO of Silicon Labs, said: "As the world's leading IoT specialist, we are focused on providing complete wireless IoT solutions, including silicon, software, tools and support. The new Bluetooth location service is further proof of our The concept of IoT is to treat IoT as a complete platform rather than a single piece of hardware, so as to provide customers with differentiated solutions.”
Location-based services are widely used across multiple industries, but barriers to adoption remain
In many industries, taking inventory and finding items is often time-consuming and labor-intensive. This situation also creates waste as items may fall behind shelves or in unexpected places. In fact, many industries face such problems, such as automakers' assembly lines with an average of 30,000 parts per vehicle to assemble, and pharmaceutical companies requiring the smallest unit of monitoring of a large number of pharmaceutical ingredients.
Although there are some positioning technologies on the market, they all have various limitations, so they have not been widely used. GPS technology does not work well indoors, Wi-Fi technology has unstable accuracy, and ultra-wideband technology (UWB), although highly accurate, has higher cost and power consumption compared to other solutions. The Bluetooth technology is mature, and can overcome a variety of application barriers through a new generation of software.
Silicon Labs' smallest SiPs and SoCs achieve sub-meter accuracy over Bluetooth
In Bluetooth 5.1, released in early 2019, some newly introduced core technologies improved location services capabilities. On this basis, Silicon Labs has developed new advanced software designed to maximize the positioning capability of the BG22 series SoC and SiP modules. New features include the following:
• Asynchronous broadcast of continuous carrier extension signal (CTE) between the device and the locator. Asynchronous broadcasting eliminates the need for synchronized transmission times between the device and the locator, so the locator can track a large number of items simultaneously, and multiple locators can triangulate the same item at the same time.
• Extended CTE broadcast to all 37 data channels. Interference can be effectively reduced by shifting the CTE transmission from the advertising channel to the data channel.
These new features enhance Silicon Labs' portfolio of Bluetooth software, one of the most comprehensive solutions available to accelerate the development of direction-finding applications. In addition, with additional development tools designed to accelerate the development of direction-finding applications, Silicon Labs' product portfolio will enable developers and designers to build a broad range of IoT location services applications to meet the specific needs of different environments and deployments.
The new software runs on the BG22 series of Bluetooth Low Energy (LE) SoCs and SiPs, the smallest form factor in Silicon Labs' portfolio. This series has ultra-low transmit and receive power consumption (4.1mA TX at 0dBm, 3.6mA RX), and is equipped with a high-performance, low-power ARM® Cortex®-M33 core (active mode 27µA/MHz, sleep mode 1.2µA ). Taken together, these products feature industry-leading energy efficiency and are capable of extending the life of coin cells for up to ten years.
Borda Technology Adopts Silicon Labs' AoA and AoD Location Services to Improve Operational Efficiency and Quality of Patient Care
Healthcare workers are always on the go, from moving specialized equipment from room to room, using medical equipment to perform various tests on patients, and administering medications, to cleaning and disinfecting tasks. These jobs involve the use of countless individual medical items that must be carefully tracked to ensure they can be found when needed, delivered on time, and clearly documented. This can be time-consuming when every second counts. A recent study found that during a shift, nurses spend an average of more than an hour searching for the equipment they need to do their jobs.
Borda Technology seeks to change this by enabling item tracking capabilities using Real-Time Location Services (RTLS) to reduce the time nurses need to find equipment so they can focus on healthcare. By running Silicon Labs' new AoA and AoD software on the BG22 Bluetooth SoC, Borda introduces a new tamper-resistant item tracking tag that not only helps locate items, but also inform healthcare workers when they need to make informed medical and business decisions Action suggestion. For example, Borda offers a solution to prevent medical personnel from using uncalibrated equipment with alarms that alert medical personnel to equipment that needs attention, preventing dangerous and sometimes life-threatening medical errors.
Silicon Labs' holistic platform-centric Bluetooth location service and easy-to-use BG22 help Borda significantly reduce the time it takes to deploy its solution. Solutions that once took months to deploy can now be up and running in just a few weeks.
Get started with AoA and AoD with Silicon Labs solutions
Silicon Labs' new Bluetooth Location Services solution consists of several parts and is available to order now from Silicon Labs and distributors. The complete solution includes:
• Bluetooth software stack supporting direction finding
• EFR32BG24 SoC
• EFR32BG22 SoC and SiP module
• AoA and AoD antenna array boards and reference designs
The solution is available now through Silicon Labs and our ecosystem partners.
