Filtering Polling on Beacon

Wireless Connectivity Ultra-Wideband
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1

Hey,

I am a bit confused on exactly how the protocol works. I get that beacons typically will just broadcast constantly. Does this mean, that any device with your UWB modules can utilize my beacons for indoor positioning?

Is there any guard I can put up, such that only authorized UWB receivers may utilize my beacons? If no, would it be possible to implement myself using the PHY layer or would it go against any fundamental parts of the protocol?

2

You need to be a bit more specific - beacons do whatever their firmware tells them to do. So what protocol / firmware / application are you talking about?
For reliable operation only one device can be transmitting at a time, multiple devices all constantly transmitting wouldn’t work.

If you mean How do I install a positioning system and stop other people using it?
If you are using an off the shelf system you are limited to what they offer, see their user manual.

As for creating your own from a phy level up - that’s exactly what the devices and API are intended for.
If you are creating your own then you have lots of options:

  1. Security through obscurity - unless you use code straight from the examples it would be reasonable effort for someone to reverse engineer your system to work out how to use it. Not very secure but enough of a barrier that someone would need to put in a fair amount of effort.
  2. Implement your own security checks on devices as part of the messages used. As secure or insecure as you want but even a basic challange/response adds a lot more complexity for someone to get around.
  3. The DW3000 added the ability to add secure encryption keys to the packets. This gives a hardware filter on packets from devices that don’t know the correct key.