Overview

Description

Renesas' Wireless Ranging (WiRa™) Software Development Kit (SDK) enhances the DA1469x family of Bluetooth® Low Energy (LE) SoCs with highly accurate and reliable distance measurement capabilities. Current market offerings fall short due to radio signal strength indicator (RSSI), a flawed measure that is sensitive to radio signal blockages. Unlike RSSI, the WiRa™ SDK uses radar-like implementation to greatly enhance distance measurement for connected devices, amounting to +/- 0.5 meters in typical situations. The result is a solution with 10x the accuracy of competing RSSI-based localization options.

The WiRa™ SDK's 2.4GHz radio interweaves Bluetooth Low Energy data packets with constant tone frequency exchanges to generate phase-based ranging signals. The high-resolution, on-chip radio wave sampling provides high-quality IQ samples, which form the inputs for distance determination. Data processing algorithms then filter the data for noise, interference and reflections. This process outputs the shortest distance over-the-air signal path length, providing the application with a distance measurement value to use.

The WiRa™ SDK leverages the existing DA1469x wireless MCU family – including its Arm® Cortex®-M33 application processor, M0+-based baseband processor and best-in-class radio performance – to provide distance measurements from a single chip. It also comes equipped with a Bluetooth LE 5.1 compliant stack and software implementation, eliminating the need for hardware adaptations or an external host processor and ensuring co-existence between Bluetooth communications and the distance measurement process.

This all adds up to a solution that provides end-users with greater reliability, security, and location and tracking accuracy for the IoT devices in peer-to-peer applications.

Features

  • Add distance measurement as a feature to your wireless applications
  • Achieve 10s of cm accuracy in typical use cases
  • Distance reported out within 200ms
  • No additional hardware needed compared to standard Bluetooth LE system designs
  • A proprietary implementation that co-exists with Bluetooth LE communication
  • Comprehensive software suite including data processing algorithms, distance output, UI, and software application example
  • Flexibility to further optimize, adapt or replace data processing algorithms
  • Small RAM memory and MIPS requirements; runs on any DA1469x Bluetooth LE SoC variant
  • Suitable for battery-powered devices
  • Benefit from DA1469x on-chip integrated battery charger
  • Pre-programmed development kit including two DA14695 Development Kit-USB boards each fitted with a MikroBUS™ OLED display

Applications

Applications

  • Asset tracking
  • Indoor positioning
  • Smart locks
  • Authentication (e.g., for mobile payments)

Documentation

Type Title Date
Manual - Software PDF 3.66 MB
Release Note PDF 208 KB
Product Brief PDF 2.07 MB
3 items

Design & Development

Renesas WiRa

The WiRa™ app from Renesas Electronics is a mobile application that works with devices which support the Renesas WiRa™ technology, such as Development Kits based on Renesas DA1469x Bluetooth® Low Energy SoC.

Software & Tools

Software Downloads

Type Title Date
Software & Tools - Software Log in to Download ZIP 26.92 MB
Software & Tools - Software Log in to Download ZIP 25.06 MB
Software & Tools - Software Log in to Download ZIP 15.11 MB
Software & Tools - Software Log in to Download ZIP 15.12 MB
4 items

Videos & Training

Renesas Phase-based Wireless Ranging: WiRa

Renesas' WiRa technology offers an attenuation-tolerant ranging solution that is able to operate in highly reflective to RF, indoor environments even in the presence of 2.4GHz (ISM band) noise from sources such as Wi-Fi.