SG Wireless, a Hong Kong-based IoT technology solutions company, has launched the "SGW Wireless Indoor Item Tracking Solution Suite" for real-time item tracking, capable of tracking items within a pre-defined area. Using Nordic's nRF52840 Bluetooth 5.3/Bluetooth Low Energy (Bluetooth LE) advanced multi-protocol system-on-chip (SoC), the solution can tell the user where a particular item is, or has been moved to. The company says the system provides 98 percent sensing accuracy within a three-meter radius, and each kit can cover up to 500 square meters of building area.


Each SGW wireless indoor item tracking solution contains eight "SGW8130C BLE beacon tags" and four "SGW6008C BLE-WiFi gateways" for IoT applications, which can track eight items in four areas. Nordic's nRF52840 SoC is implemented on the patented and certified "SGW1110 BLE" module integrated in beacon tags and gateways. Both devices use the nRF52840's 2.4 GHz multiprotocol radio (the nRF52840 also supports Bluetooth 5.3, long-range, Bluetooth mesh, ANT, Thread, Zigbee, IEEE 802.15.4, NFC, and proprietary 2.4 GHz RF protocol software) with 8 dBm output Power and -95 dBm RX sensitivity with a link budget of 103 dBm. This link budget provides good extended coverage for indoor item tracking applications such as tracking items in hospitals, warehouses, and factories.

Users can attach the SGW8130C BLE beacon tag to the items that need to be tracked, using one beacon tag per item. Each beacon tag broadcasts a unique Bluetooth Low Energy data message for the gateway to receive. To optimize battery life, the beacon tag broadcasts data messages every five seconds. When the SGW6008C BLE-WiFi gateway receives Bluetooth Low Energy data messages from beacon tags around it, it determines the strength of the signal. The gateway sends all data to the relevant application website program through the Wi-Fi connection, and aggregates and processes the received information through a proprietary algorithm to determine the area where each beacon tag is located, thereby determining the corresponding item location. Users can instantly locate valuables through a web application on a computer or smartphone. In addition, users can gain a more complete picture of item usage, allowing better planning for asset maintenance, repairs and necessary replacements to optimize business operations.

The nRF52840 SoC's embedded 64 MHz, 32-bit Arm Cortex M4 processor with floating-point unit (FPU) can be used as a host on the SGW6008C gateway to directly forward data between Bluetooth Low Energy and Wi-Fi devices, while No additional processing is required. The SoC has ample memory allocation of 1 MB of flash and 256 KB of RAM, allowing for the storage and caching of large amounts of data.

The SGW6008C gateway is powered via the micro-USB interface, while the SGW8130C beacon tag runs on a CR2032 coin cell battery and is capable of delivering up to 3 million location updates over a period of three years, thanks in part to the low power consumption of the Nordic nRF52840 SoC operational characteristics.

"Nordic's nRF52840 SoC is arguably the most complete and cost-effective solution in the Bluetooth low energy category in terms of product size," said Yongde Wang, CTO of SG Wireless. "This SoC features an Arm Cortex M4 processor. and sufficient on-chip memory to run advanced IoT applications without the need for additional processing chips, enabling us to develop small and powerful Bluetooth low energy module products.”

"In addition, Nordic's comprehensive software development kit (SDK) provides reference coding, which greatly shortens the product development cycle."