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LAUNCHXL-CC2640R2: Angle of Arrival with BOOSTXL-AOA

Part Number: LAUNCHXL-CC2640R2
Other Parts Discussed in Thread: CC2642R, CC2640R2F
Hello,
For our Senior Design project, we are planning on creating a square platform with wheels which could follow a user (an automatically tracking dolly essentially) while carrying a load. It will be able to carry a certain amount of load while going at a reasonable speed to follow the user. We thought about multiple technologies to track the direction of the user. GPS comes to mind as the first technology, but we want our technology to be local which wouldn't depend on any external technologies and would also be power efficient compared to GPS. In addition, GPS isn't reliable indoors, so we do not want to use it.
We were initially thinking about placing 4 omni antennas at the edges of the platform and use signal strength to figure out the location of the user (not through triangulating, but just through weighing the 4 different signal strengths acquired through the 4 omni antennas). When we tested this idea, the signals strengths weren't very stable and reliable so we realized that this method might not track the user's direction as accurately as we want it to. Another option was to do this through directional antennas, but this method has its challenges as well. Then we found out about Angle of Arrival (AoA) technology and were totally blown away by it. This technology addresses our problem perfectly and could help us get accurate results. It also could be implemented through Bluetooth Low Energy which is perfect as we wanted to use that protocol. The only issue we are facing is the budget and availability of products out there. We are students so we wouldn't be able to spend lots of money on this. Other than that, we were not able to find many products with AoA technology.
Our plan is to first buy/borrow (depending on how expensive the product may be) an evaluation board with AoA technology in order to make sure that it works with our dolly, and then simply buy an AoA IP (essentially an array of antennas, like an antenna board) and integrate it into our own circuit design. This is why we are interested in the BOOSTXL-AOA BoosterPack. But as I mentioned before, budget is a big issue of ours and we were wondering if there are any other cheaper solutions.
  • Hi,

    Thank you for reaching out.

    Please refer to the BOOSTXL-AOA: BoosterPack End Of Life comments. I am also wondering if you may under estimate the integration efforts required by an AoA based solution. Among others, you would require estimation algorithms that require months to be developed. On the top of that, the CC2640R2F does not support AoA (you should rather look at the CC2642R).

    Assuming you are looking for a cheap and easy to integrate solution, RSSI based localization is probably the best path. Other than that, I had a similar project back in college. We solved it using an ultrasonic-based solution. I remember we had one full-analog solution (with comparison of the signal phase received on both side) and one based on distance measurement by the two sides of the vehicle.

    I hope this will help,

    Best regards,