SoylentNews

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

One of the new chips in this year’s crop of iPhones is the U1; it provides Ultra Wideband (UWB) connectivity that, in conjunction with Internet of Things (IoT) technology, could offer a myriad of new services for enterprises and consumers.

As Apple puts it, UWB technology offers “spatial awareness" – the ability for your phone to recognize its surroundings and the objects in it. Essentially, one iPhone 11 user can point his or her phone at another and transfer a file or photo.

While the technology isn't new, Apple’s implementation marks the first time UWB has been used in a modern smartphone.

UWB is a short-range, wireless communication protocol that – like Bluetooth or Wi-Fi – uses radio waves. But it differs substantially in that IT operates at a very high frequency. As its name denotes, it also uses a wide spectrum of several GHz. One way to think of it is as a radar that can continuously scan an entire room and precisely lock onto an object like a laser beam to discover its location and communicate data.

In the early 2000s, UWB saw limited use in military radars and covert communications and was used briefly as a form of medical imaging, such as remote heart monitoring systems; Its adoption lagged until recently when commercial interests began exploring potential uses.

Today, its primary purpose is expected to be location discovery and device ranging, according to Phil Solis, an IDC research director. While both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth have been modified to allow greater accuracy in locating other devices and connecting to them, UWB is natively more precise, uses less power and, as production of UWB chips ramps up over time, holds the promise of a lower price point.

Samsung, Apple and Huawei, the world’s largest smartphone makers, are all involved in UWB projects including chip and antenna production, according to Solis. Apple, however, is the first to actually deploy it in a phone.

Samsung, along with Xiaomi, NXP, Sony, Bosch and others, are also a part of the FiRa (fine ranging) Consortium, which is working to grow the UWB ecosystem. That ecosystem is built atop the existing IEE 802.15.4/4x standard for low-data-rate wireless communication.

A UWB transmitter works by sending billions of pulses (UWB was previously known as “pulse radio”) across the wide spectrum frequency; a corresponding receiver then translates the pulses into data by listening for a familiar pulse sequence sent by the transmitter. Pulses are sent about one every two nanoseconds, which helps UWB achieve its real-time accuracy.

UWB is extremely low power but the high bandwidth (500MHz) is ideal for relaying a lot data from a host device to other devices up to about 30 feet away. Unlike Wi-Fi, however, it is not particularly good at transmitting through walls.

“Because it’s such high frequency, it’s very much line of sight,” said Jack Gold, principal analyst at J. Gold Associates. “So, the advantage is because it has such wide bandwidth, it has a lot of data capability. If you’re transmitting a 60GHz signal that’s 500MHz wide… and multiply that by however many channels you can do, you’re talking very wide band.”

To increase UWB’s range and reception reliability, a MIMO (multiple-input and multiple-output), distributed antenna system has been added to the standard that enables short-range networks. The antennas can be embedded into a smartphone or other devices such as a wristband or smart key.

When a smartphone with UWB (like the latest iPhone) comes close to another UWB device, the two start ranging, or measuring, their exact distance. The ranging is accomplished through “Time of Flight” (ToF) measurements between the devices; these are used to calculate the roundtrip time of challenge/response packets.

Based on the IEEE 802.15.4a standard, UWB can determine the relative position of peer devices with line of sight at up to 200 meters, according to the FiRa Consortium. The Consortium is currently adding a security extension – specified in IEEE 802.15.4z – to make it a “secure fine-ranging technology.”

Original Submission