Running DWM1001 modules with PANS firmware and trying to figure out a couple things for a bigger deployment.
Can I add more than 4 anchors to a network and still have them all update at the same rate? I want to cover a larger area and I’m not sure if there’s a hard limit on anchor count or if it just scales.
Also is there a way to disable the 4-anchor-per-frame cap and pull the raw ranging data myself so I can run my own multilateration across all the anchors in range, instead of relying on the built-in position engine? If that’s possible, what’s the API call to get the raw distances instead of the computed position?
The radio protocol PANS uses has a 4 anchor maximum per ranging frame, that’s a fundamental part of the system structure. You can’t change this since it would involve changing the data sent over the radio link which would then break the radio approvals certification of the system.
There is no reason why those 4 anchors have to be the same every time so you can change configurations and measure a different 4 each time but you’re looking at looking far longer to get all the measurements, if you move meaningfully over that time then you’ll get a significant position error unless you can compensate for it.
Realistically if you want to do something like this you probably want to look at using something other than PANS so you have more direct control over the measurement process. However that change has complexity and approvals certification implications.