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Location Finds Bluetooth, Ultra-Wideband (eetimes.com)
An update of the Bluetooth specification released today enables location services accurate to within 10 centimeters thanks to a new direction-finding capability. From a report: It arrives as a separate draft standard is nearly ready for an even faster and more accurate capability using ultra-wideband (UWB) radio, geared for use in smartphones. Bluetooth 5.1 describes ways to determine location using multiple antennas at either the transmitter or receiver. It uses measures of signal phase and amplitude to measure location, though profiles for application developers are still being finished.
In mid-March, the IEEE 802.15.4z standard for UWB should be in a stable draft form, opening the door for silicon designs. It enables location measures within a single centimeter and resolves in a nanosecond, a rate faster than Bluetooth. Smartphone giants Apple and Samsung have been active in the .4z meetings also attended by Huawei, leading some to suggest that the capability could be integrated in handsets within two years. NXP has also been active since the group started a year ago, giving rise to speculation that UWB could come into phones though an integrated NFC chip.
In mid-March, the IEEE 802.15.4z standard for UWB should be in a stable draft form, opening the door for silicon designs. It enables location measures within a single centimeter and resolves in a nanosecond, a rate faster than Bluetooth. Smartphone giants Apple and Samsung have been active in the .4z meetings also attended by Huawei, leading some to suggest that the capability could be integrated in handsets within two years. NXP has also been active since the group started a year ago, giving rise to speculation that UWB could come into phones though an integrated NFC chip.
This will mean even the new Galaxy S10 and probably the S11 will be instantly obsolete.... get that line of home equity ready gents, you're going to have to chuck your old phones and pony up for this amazing capability
I understand the summary but I can't figure out what the headline is trying to say. Anyone got any ideas? "Location Finds Bluetooth, Ultra-Wideband"
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
Did you also consider your old phone obsolete just because they released a new one without a headphone jack? Will you change cars if one is released this year in a new color?
Just like that amazing BT capability, this will not be of much use to the owner of the phone, but will be used extensively to anyone capable of placing the required antennas in public spaces in order to track your every move six ways from Sunday.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
One minute the cops are there trying to settle a domestic fight, the next they're humping like rabbits, or more like cats, you can't tell if they're fucking or fighting.
Is this another optional part of the spec? A number of nice BT5.0 features are optional and not highly adopted. Basically useless.
What's even better than the distance measurement is the fact that the ranging process includes a secure key derivation protocol. The two radios that participate in the "secure bounding" process, as it's called, emerge with both a highly-accurate range estimate and a shared secret key. Eavesdroppers can't easily compute the shared key (I haven't actually looked into the details of how this works), which means that if subsequent communications are encrypted and authenticated using the shared secret plus another mutual secret, relay attacks become very hard.
Suppose we have a secure authentication protocol that we only want to operate at close range (say, unlocking your car). Without precise ranging we have two problems. The first is that the protocol may be carried out at a longer range than you want. For example, unlocking your car in your driveway when you're in the house. Precise ranging by itself solves that problem. The second is that an active attacker may perform a relay attack and carry out the protocol at an arbitrary distance, such as unlocking your car in the mall parking lot when you're walking around the mall. The relay is performed by putting one radio near your phone and other near your car and relaying messages between them.
Note that without secure bounding, cryptography can't solve the relay problem because the attacker doesn't have to be able to read the messages, just pass them back and forth. And precise ranging doesn't help because your phone will measure the distance to the attacker's first radio and your car will measure the distance to the attacker's second radio. You can try to do something like have each side encrypt its distance measurement and send it to the other side, but that just means the attacker has to be careful to get both of his radios about the same distance from yours.
But with secure bounding, each pair of actually-communicating radios will compute a distinct session key. The attacker will know both of these, but if your phone and the car both securely combine the bounding-derived session key with a secret the two share and the attacker doesn't have, the result will be a shared session secret which will only be identical if the phone and car are actually communicating directly.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Accurate enough to be used in VR controllers?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
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UWB was supposed to be the new PHY scheduled for bluetooth 3.0, but the initiative was shot down by a patent troll.
Now, Broadcom said that they are ready to give them a battle. With such a strong backer, I guess it will be a hit this time
So now I can find where I left my bluetooth-enabled smartphone...
Yes, this too, and it's the first thing I thought of. Another thing was what someone else thought of: VR.
In this case, considering the short range of BT in general, I'd think it'd be useful for determining the exact position of shoppers in, say, one of these unattended stores that companies like Amazon (?) are trying out. Also, feeding a shopper specific ads while in a store, and, of course, collecting more marketing data on shoppers while they're in a store, like what aisles they went to, how long they stayed there, where they stopped and for how long, and so on.
1. What TFA is describing sounds an awful lot, if I'm not mistaken, like the same techniques that GPS uses to acquire a position fix, except on a very much smaller scale, due to the extremely limited range of Bluetooth. A 'constellation' of Bluetooth 'satellite' transmitters within a defined area could be configured with appropriate 'ephemeris' data describing their physical situation within that space, which combined with the techniques described, would provide a very accurate position fix within that space. At least 3 'satellites' and you have a good 2D fix, and perhaps a reasonable 3D fix (more transmitters at different 'altitudes', perhaps?); more satellites placed properly, the better the accuracy.
2. Where this would be useful, you might ask? Some of the ideas other commentors in this thread have floated are: Virtual Reality, In-store position sensing of shoppers for purposes of serving specifically-targeted ads (depending on what aisle you're in, for instance), and (of course) gathering of marketing data on shoppers, based on where they go in the store, where they stop and for how long, and so on. Of course, how much this technology would invade your privacy would depend entirely on the implementation of the smartphone app and how much data it's collecting and transmitting, and of course what the receiver of that data decides to do with it.
I tried playing around with various Bluetooth devices (Tile, etc) and an Arduino to see if could get something like bluetooth triangulation working for a pet project. The best I could come up with was an RSSI measuring scheme that sorta worked line of site, w/out movement but went to heck with obstacles and very little movement.