Description
Microcontrollers (typically ARM Cortex-M class) are the firmware host for BLE beacons and BLE scanners in the thesis architecture. Nordic Semiconductor's nRF52 family (nRF52832, nRF52840, nRF52833) is the dominant choice for BLE 5.x including direction finding (AoA/AoD). They are typically embedded into purpose-built boards rather than used standalone. For the thesis, MCUs appear in the BLE-collector and BLE-beacon device-instance notes as the silicon underneath.
Specs / capabilities
- nRF52840: Cortex-M4F @ 64 MHz, 1 MB Flash, 256 KB RAM, BLE 5.x + 802.15.4
- nRF52833: similar but DECT NR+ / Direction Finding capable
- STM32WB55: dual-core M4 + M0+, BLE 5.x
- I²C / SPI / UART / USB / GPIO peripherals
Tooling
- Nordic nRF Connect SDK (Zephyr-based) / nRF5 SDK (legacy)
- STM32CubeMX / STM32CubeIDE
- PlatformIO, Zephyr RTOS
Used by (papers)
- BLE beacon / scanner deployments in indoor localization
- BLE direction-finding experiments (5.1 AoA/AoD)