General-Purpose Wireless Distance Sensor

Thanks to the availability of different wireless communication techniques, external devices can extend today’s smartphones. Such an external device can be any kind of a sensor, for example. This thesis describes a general-purpose wireless distance sensor, which connects to a smartphone or any other device equipped with Bluetooth technology. Further, an Android application which handles the measurements from multiple sensors and visualizes them is developed. Several use-cases for this sensor are described. One example is to use a couple of sensors as a parking assistant in a home vehicle hall. The sensor devices as well as the smartphone application are developed mainly with this use-case in mind. The thesis describes the trade-off between energy consumption and latency and shows how a practical solution can be reached. The sensor devices are evaluated with respect to energy consumption, interference between multiple sensors, disturbances as well as the connection establishment time.