FiRa – positioning with a smartphone
A UWB-capable smartphone determines its position in the room — with three to ten anchors to the FiRa standard and no further infrastructure. Place the anchors, enter their positions in the app, and the phone continuously measures the distance to every anchor and calculates its position in the plane.
No gateway, no server, no cabling. The anchors run on battery; the phone sets up the connection to them itself.
What you need
| Article | Article number | Contents |
|---|---|---|
| FiRa set | 902.236 | 3 anchors (numbered), charging case ICCase10 with 10 slots, USB charger 5 V / 2.1 A, USB cable A to B (1.8 m) |
| FiRa anchor DW3000 | 902.079A020 | one more anchor, to extend the system to up to 10 |
Both are in the shop under FiRa – positioning with a smartphone.
The anchor
Each anchor is a quad tag (form factor 164643) with the radino40 DW3000 radio module:
| Article number | 902.079A020 |
| UWB chip | Qorvo DW3000 with LNA and PA, channels 5 (6.5 GHz) and 9 (8 GHz) |
| Microcontroller | Nordic nRF52840, Bluetooth Low Energy |
| Sensors | 3-axis accelerometer |
| Battery | LiPo 1000 mAh, charged via USB Micro or in the charging case |
| Indicators | green LED, red LED |
| Dimensions (L × W × H) | 46 × 43 × 16 mm |
| Weight | 33 g |
| Firmware | FiRa, preloaded |
Setting it up
- Charge the anchors in the charging case.
- Place the anchors in the room — not in a line, but so that they span the area in which positioning is needed.
- Open the app and enter the position of each anchor.
- The phone finds the anchors via Bluetooth Low Energy and negotiates the FiRa parameters itself (channel 9, DS-TWR, static STS).
- UWB two-way ranging starts; the distance to every anchor is measured to within about 10 cm. From this the app continuously calculates the position in the plane.
More anchors cover a larger area; the system works with up to ten. The charging case of the set has ten slots.
Which phones
- Android 12 or later with a FiRa-capable UWB chip (tested among others with current Samsung Galaxy models): positioning with the reference app "UWB Positioning".
- iPhone with U1 or U2 chip: via Apple Nearby Interaction (Qorvo's standard BLE service) — distance and, where the phone provides it, direction. Positioning from several anchors is available in the reference app on Android only.
Downloads
- Android reference app "UWB Positioning" (APK as ZIP, evaluation version) — unzip and install the APK on the phone
- radino40 DW3000 datasheet (305000184A003)
- SDK with FiRa firmware and example projects: on request from In-Circuit (sales@in-circuit.de)
Your own development
If you want to integrate the anchors into your own application or write your own firmware, work with the radio module directly: radino40 DW3000 on the radino40 Spider RP-SMA carrier board with a UWB antenna.
See also
- radino40 DW3000 — the radio module inside the anchors
- ICTRAC — positioning of many tags with permanently installed anchors and a server