m monad-knowledge FIIT STU · open research vault
hardwar

esp32-c6

Also known as: ESP32-C6, ESP32-C6-DevKitC-1, Espressif ESP32-C6

Description

ESP32-C6 is Espressif's 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi 6 + BLE 5.3 + 802.15.4 RISC-V SoC. Compared to esp32-c5 it loses the 5 GHz band but gains BLE 5.3 (over BLE 5.0) and a more mature ESP-IDF lineage. 10× units in the lab — the BLE-broadcast and 2.4 GHz CSI workhorses, and the natural choice for the BLE-listener role in the field experiments because BLE 5.3 + extended advertising is exactly what the gamification mobile app emits.

Specs / capabilities

  • Single-core 32-bit RISC-V @ 160 MHz, 400 KB SRAM
  • Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) 2.4 GHz only, 20 / 40 MHz channels, up to 256 sub-carriers
  • Bluetooth 5.3 LE (advertising, scanning, extended advertising, periodic advertising, LE Audio)
  • 802.15.4 (Thread / Zigbee / Matter)
  • USB-Serial-JTAG, SPI / I²C / UART
  • < $5 module, ~$10 DevKitC-1
  • ESP32-C6-DevKitC-1 reference board

CSI extraction path

esp_wifi_set_csi_rx_cb() on 2.4 GHz HE-LTF; channel width 20 / 40 MHz. Same code path as esp32-c5 but restricted to the 2.4 GHz band. Less subcarrier resolution than C5 on 5 GHz, but: (a) Bluetooth coexistence on the same band gives correlated activity signatures, (b) most BLE beacons sit on 2.4 GHz so the CSI ↔ BLE relation is observable on one radio.

Role in the experiment series

  • EXP-P1: BLE listener bring-up; extended-advertising RX validation; BLE-RSSI distribution sanity vs the sadowski2020_f2ba ↗ envelope (n ∈ [1.8, 3.5], σ ∈ [3, 7] dB).
  • EXP-F1: primary BLE listener pair (passive scan of mobile-app advertisements → automated ground-truth count).
  • EXP-F2: triggers calibration-mode adv-rate change via the mobile app's TCP/UDP channel.
  • EXP-F3: BLE half of the BLE+CSI fusion baselines.

Quirks / known issues

  • 2.4 GHz only — cannot capture 5 GHz CSI. Pair with esp32-c5 when both bands matter.
  • BLE 5.3 LE Audio not used in this project; advertising + scanning are the only modes exercised.
  • BLE scan-and-CSI-capture simultaneously stresses the radio time-slicing; verify packet-drop rates in EXP-P1 bring-up before relying on it in a field run.

Tooling

  • ESP-IDF ≥ v5.1
  • esp_ble_gap_* API for advertising + scanning
  • esp_wifi_set_csi_rx_cb() for CSI
  • NimBLE or Bluedroid host stack (NimBLE recommended for memory)

Used by (papers)

  • Same lineage as esp32-c5; C6-specific papers are still rare. The general ESP32 CSI literature (choi2022_17c2, koo2026_a08d) carries over.
  • esp32-c5 — dual-band Wi-Fi 6 sibling for 5 GHz CSI
  • esp32-s3 — SD logger sidecar
  • ble · bluetooth — protocol baselines
  • ble-beacon — beacon platforms generally