BLE for Social distancing use case

[Dhanraj]

We are looking for BLE module for Social distancing application.

We want to use Only BLE tags to estimate relative distance with respect to nearby tags within 5 meter range.

Please confirm whether this is feasible using Nordic  BLE chipset/module. also please let us know what level of distance accuracy we can achieve.

Kindly suggest suitable BLE  module. ( key factor for consideration – Low BOM cost, Low power consumption, consistency and accuracy in distance measurement)

Also plz let us know if there is guide or case study document available for this use case.

[haakonsh]

If these are BLE tags that are to be worn, then what you should expect to achieve is to determine if a tag has been within 5m of the receiver with RSSI measurements with fairly high accuracy. Relative distance is not that accurate with wearable BLE tags as the human body will attenuate any signal, ie the Received Signal Strength Indicator will vary depending on what is attenuating/blocking the signal at any given time. You should be able to differentiate between 5m and 1m, but you will need to experiment yourself to see what kind of accuracy you can achieve in your use-case. 

Any BLE module on this list can be used for your use-case:
https://www.nordicsemi.com/Software-and-tools/3rd-Party/3rd-party-modules 

We do not have any guides/case studies, but there should be plenty off academic literature on the subject of BLE distance tracking, contact tracing, etc.