I have a question conserning the UWB signal strength. I have 2 chips. One is anchor and other is tag. The chips work fine updating the length at 2sec frequenzy but every time there is a little obsticle between the chips the communication breaks down. If i go to another room with the chip the communication breaks down. Is the signal strength honestly so bad coz I have been in the impression that UWB signal is more powerful in short ranges than Wifi.
I would want to consider ESP32 UWB3000 chips as a remote controller of a semiautomatic pipebending machine. The length mesurment would be a safety percaution for controlling the machine. If someone takes the controller out of 8-10m range from the pipebending machine then the machine will no longer accept the commands that comes from the controller. And when the controller is brought back to the safetysector (8-10m) from the machine then it will again accept commands.
But I am struggling really with how sensitive signal is to obsticles. Coz the other chip would be inserted into elecrtical cabinet of the machine or to the operation cabinet. Either way, it will be closed space.
I have tested the controlling of the machine with ESP32-WROOM-32E and its perfect. Takes commands from 50m away the machine but…I still need to get the length measurment to work reliabely in 8-10m sector of the machine.
The DW3000 uses 6.5 or 8 GHz radio. WiFi is at 2.4 GHz. The general rule is that the higher the frequency the shorter the range and the less the ability to penetrate obstructions.
There are options to change the data rate and signal power that improve the range but they can only do so much.
You may want to look at the DW1000 instead. That supports a lower frequency band and a lower data rate, both give you better range and obstruction penetration. The down side is that some 4G phone networks are starting to interfere with that frequency range.
Okay. DW1000 sounds a better option but I don’t like a bit that it might interfere some 4G phone networks. Has this been confirmed like in action that it interferes networks or is it a theory that it might do that? This makes me think…If DW1000 is interfering 4G phone networks by default then why has it been build at the first place? Is it more like for hobby users? Is there any way we could neutralize the interfering with parameters or other settings?
Sorry, my error there - 5G phone networks not 4G.
4G generally maxes out at around 1.9 GHz (I think, I’m not an expert). 5G is mostly in the same general area but the specification adds support for higher frequency short range, high data rate connections for high usage areas like cities.
Also UWB is very low power. It’s not an issue with uwb interfering with phones, it’s phones jamming UWB that will be the issue.