IMU-Aided Correction of Orientation-Induced Ranging Error in Bluetooth Channel Sounding on Commercial Hardware

Abstract

Bluetooth Low Energy Channel Sounding (BLE CS), standardized in Bluetooth Core Specification 6.0 (September 2024), enables distance estimation via phase-based ranging (PBR) and round-trip time (RTT). Although prior work has studied CS accuracy in configurations with a fixed orientation, no published work has studied how device orientation affects ranging error on commercial hardware. We present the first study of orientation-induced CS ranging error and a Machine Learning correction using IMU features. This study used the EFR32xG24 Channel Sounding Development Kit, the only commercial CS platform with an integrated six-axis Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU). Our results show that device orientation has a substantial effect on CS ranging accuracy; we found that a Random Forest model trained on the IMU derived orientation achieved a 74.6\% Mean Absolute Error (MAE) reduction under a Leave One Orientation Out Evaluation, demonstrating that IMU readings have potential to improve ranging accuracy.