DWM1000 to DWM3000 migration

Hello

We currently use the DWM1000 in a TWR application and have many thousands deployed in field. We would like to take advantage of the DWM3000 and upgrade our current product lines, but it needs to maintain compatibility with the existing DWM1000 solution. Is there an API migration guide from the DWM1000 to the DWM3000?

I have attempted to get the DWM3000 working by dropping in the DWM3000 API and updating API calls where required, however I cannot get comms working between the DWM3000 and an existing working DWM1000. Are there common issues I can look for?

Thank you
Justin

1 Like

I have found the cause of this issue. DWM3000 only supports channel 5 and 9 and not channels 1 to 7 inclusive. Our DWM1000 solution uses channel 2, making communication between the DWM1000 and DWM3000 impossible. If I modify the DWM1000 to use channel 5, the systems communicate correctly.

Is it possible for the DWM3000 to support other channels in the future?

Thanks
Justin

Channels 1-4 are in a different frequency band, they are around 4 GHz, channel 5 is around 6.5 GHz. I think the chances of a change to include support for such a significantly different frequency in the future is highly unlikely.

Hi,
DW3000 is backward compatible with DW1000. But only when using channel 5 and for data rates of 6.8 Mb/s and 850 kb/s.

DW3000 supports Ch5 and Ch9 , So Ch5 is the common channel between DW1000 and DW3000.

Hi Just,

Also note:

  • The DWM3000 is footprint and size compatible with the DWM1000
  • The DWM3000 is not register compatible with the DWM1000. It uses it’s own API, we do not have an API that works on both the DW1000 and DW3000, but porting DW1000 code to to the DW3000 is fairly straight forward (unless DW1000 specific features are used).

And no, we don’t have any plans to support other channels on the DWM3000.

Hi Seppe

Yes I replaced a DWM1000 with a DWM3000 on one of our existing designs, dropped in the DWM3000 API and got it communicating with a DWM1000 on channel 5.

Thanks
Justin