Here is a theory I would like to test out, please tell me if this is plausible.
This is supposing that there are no obstacles and that the atmosphere is giving the least interference.
The setup: A stationary cellphone connects to the smirf, which is also stationary. The time that it took for the smirf to detect the cellphone is recorded-this is essentially the time it took for the bluetooth signals to reach the cellphone(there’s probably some time off due to processing time and etc).
time it took=t
Frequency is known to be 2.4 ghz
So to find the distance:
c is speed of light
c=fλ
λ=c/f
T(period)=1/f
t/T=number of waves
t/T*λ=distance from device.
Am I totally missing something here? I know that using pure math is not going to guarantee perfect results. What are factors that could cause the errors in this solution? Any discussion is appreciated!
I’m no expert in this area, but I don’t think what you are proposing is plausible…at least not easily or using off-the-shelf components.
I’m horrible at math and I’ve never had any formal education around waves and such. (I used this link to help understand the relationships.) But per my limited understanding, the signal will always travel at the speed-of-light, right? You already know that the frequency of the waves is 2.4ghz… but that doesn’t really matter. For a measured period of time, you will receive waves at 2.4ghz regardless of the distance that they have traveled.
I might have missed something though. However practically, I don’t think most hardware is going to give the level of resolution that would be required to make those measurements at enough precision. You mentioned bluetooth smirf, but I would expect that anytime a bluetooth protocol/stack component get involved you’ll have lost the necessary precision around waves and times. You noted that it wouldn’t be precise, but given the scale of the variables I don’t think the general approach would give distances even close to reality unless the measurements were very precise.
Most reading I’ve seen around this deals with signal strength analysis and similar complex factors. Some interesting reading I came across:
Yeah I’ve heard about those concepts before. And after some consideration I’ve decided to go with that idea instead of relying on dynamic calculations.
