Advertising position with battery-less Bluetooth low energy
Marcel Louis Meli, Michael Wuerth · Zürcher Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften digital collection (Zurich University of Applied Sciences) · 2012
One application of the modern mobile phone is navigation. For instance, a GPS module placed in the mobile phone can be used to inform the user about his position. Coupled with the appropriate maps and information about where to go, the system can be used to lead the user to the right place. There are several places where the GPS signal is not available (or say not strong enough), and the position information is missing. In this work, we present a low cost tag that can be used to broadcast GPS coordinates (and other valuable information) using the new Bluetooth Low Energy wireless standard, particularly in places where the GPS signal is too weak. The low cost wireless embedded system is built using very low power communication concepts. Contrary to other similar devices, it can run on harvested energy, eliminating the need of a battery and therefore strongly reducing maintenance needs. The tag makes use of Ble ADV frames, resulting in a very simple system with low memory requirements. The pre-programmed coordinates of a given location can be sent on 1 or on all the 3 advertising channels of Ble using energy harvested from the environment light with a small solar cell. All this results in a very low cost active Ble tag, powered with energy harvesting.