Ultra-Wideband, the robust wireless communications technology commonly known as UWB, is such a versatile technology, capable of doing so many different things, that it can be hard to categorise.
For instance, UWB often serves as a ranging technology, used to pinpoint the whereabouts of an object, so it’s easier to find things that can be misplaced or lost, like a wallet. Other times, UWB is a location technology, used to measure distance and determine the direction of motion, to navigate through large indoor spaces, such as airports and shopping malls. UWB location also lets other devices respond to the presence of your smartphone or smartwatch, so you can do things like lock or unlock your front door based on your location, or have your car respond to your approach by unlocking the driver door and starting the engine, and then reversing the process when you leave.
UWB can also be a radar technology, used to sense both presence and movement, so it’s easier to know if someone has left a room, or track an object through a production facility. UWB radar can even be used to save lives, by detecting signs of life in an emergency or, more routinely, as part of child-detection systems in cars, which alert the driver if a child is detected in the rear seat of a parked car.
Drawing on a combination of these capabilities, UWB can make everyday systems smarter, safer, and more autonomous. For example, UWB-equipped systems in the home, on the road, in medical facilities and industrial environments, can use varying combinations of ranging and radar to enable new kinds of spatial awareness, using presence, location and motion, to save energy, deliver higher degrees of autonomy, keep people safe, or just make familiar experiences more intuitive and more enjoyable.
Also, because UWB can easily be combined with other well-established wireless protocols, including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Near Field Communication (NFC), developers are finding ways to optimise power consumption, simplify user interaction, and add precision by using UWB in combination with other wireless protocols.
Industry backing
Standardisation is crucial for a technology like UWB that is set to enable various user experiences and services including device-to-device and device-to-infrastructure applications. The availability of chipsets helps rollout of the technology and increased adoption in various verticals from consumer mobile and IoT devices to automotive. That resulted in the establishment of several different ecosystems to support the development of standards for interoperable UWB solutions addressing various segments. Some of the key groups guiding UWB’s evolution are:
• The FiRa Consortium – a non-profit organisation, founded in 2019 with the help of NXP, that promotes the use of UWB technology for use cases such as access control, location-based services, and device-to-device services.
• The Car Connectivity Consortium (CCC) – a standards organisation in which NXP is a charter member, which has focused on vehicle-to-smartphone connectivity since 2011.
• The Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA) – originally the ZigBee Alliance, the CSA is best known today as the group behind Matter, the interoperability standard for smart-home and Internet of Things (IoT) technology.
Presence in smartphones
Another reason why UWB is growing quickly across such a broad spectrum of use cases is the fact that the technology is now a standard feature in the latest flagship smartphones from Apple, Google, Samsung, and others.
This creates a ready-made infrastructure for UWB functionality, and developers have been quick to take advantage. This is especially the case in consumer-oriented applications, such as asset trackers, digital keys and various smart-home devices, including fans, lamps and smart speakers, which interact with and respond to the presence of a UWB-enabled smartphone.
Having over a billion UWB-enabled devices in the field, ABI Research expects that the annual shipments of UWB technology will be over 500 million by 2025. As more smartphones, smartwatches and other wearable/portable devices offer UWB as a standard feature, consumers will become increasingly familiar with the technology, and that will, in turn, help drive demand for use cases that employ UWB.
Use cases
As UWB continues to gain momentum, it is anticipated that UWB will become a standard part of systems that blend seamlessly with daily routines. Here are some examples of what’s underway:
Automotive: UWB is already part of the CCC Digital Key specification, which lets drivers use their smartphones to automate and manage access to their vehicles. Users can open and start cars, without having to present their smartphone or smartwatch to the vehicle. To protect hands-free access, the UWB-enabled mobile device and the vehicle mutually authenticate and the vehicle verifies that the mobile device’s CCC Digital Key authorises the requested operation. What’s more, secure ranging, with very precise time-of-flight measurement, prevents relay attacks, which use signal amplification to trick the vehicle into thinking that the mobile device is nearby when it’s not.
A growing trend for UWB in automotive is Rear Occupant Alert (ROA) systems, which are sometimes also called Child Presence Detection (CPD) systems. These are onboard systems that prevent children from being left behind in an overheating car – another major trend for UWB in automotive.
Smart home and smart building: UWB-enabled smartphones and remote controls can support point-to-control and ‘find my’ features. UWB-enabled speakers can optimise sound rendering based on room occupancy and the positioning and movement of listeners. Living spaces can adjust settings automatically, depending on who is where, optimising the operation and energy efficiency of HVAC systems, lighting networks, and entertainment systems. Secure authentication, point-to-control, secure access, obstruction sensing, presence detection, mapping, and other features, increase automation and make home appliances safer, more efficient and more intuitive to use.
Industrial IoT: The UWB use cases in production facilities and other industrial environments extend across tracking resources, such as work-in-process goods, tools, and heavy equipment, to improve production efficiency. More recently, UWB is being used to manage access control for employees, locate workers in an emergency, or support geofencing capabilities that ensure only authorised personnel are in restricted areas. Geofencing can also be used with autonomous vehicles to avoid entry into hazardous environments. Similarly, a robot equipped with a UWB device can continuously sense for the presence of people or moving objects, and automatically stop operation if a target is detected in the defined zone. Combining UWB with cameras, for computer vision, expands the options for autonomy, energy saving and safety.
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