The prospect of UWB technology is promising. Are the chips ready?
2022-03-31
Apple's "anti lost artifact" UWB (ultra wideband) technology with fire is opening up incremental space in vehicle, smart home, Internet of things and other fields with emerging applications such as digital car keys, senseless access control and senseless payment. According to ABI research, by 2026, the shipment of equipment supporting UWB will increase from 143 million units in 2020 to more than 1.3 billion units. On March 22, Murata electronics online symposium introduced the ultra small sip system module developed based on qorvo and NXP UWB chip, which mainly provides high-precision positioning and data transmission functions for the Internet of things market. In addition to NXP, qorvo and other overseas enterprises actively laying out UWB chips, domestic UWB chip enterprises nurisin technology and Hanwei microelectronics successively completed a new round of financing at the end of last year and January this year. Downstream manufacturers such as Xiaomi are also investing in UWB chip R & D enterprises and building UWB ecology. Is the chip ready for UWB market application space? Mobile phone + car is the largest potential market "The unique skill of losing three and four things is going to be lost" -- in April 2021, Apple released the "anti loss artifact" airtag at the spring press conference. With UWB technology, users can see how far the items with airtag are from the mobile phone and which direction to look for. In the same year, Google pixel6 Pro flagship mobile phone adopted qorvo based UWB technology, becoming the first Android smartphone equipped with qorvo UWB technology. Behind the boom of airtag is the market demand for short-range and high-precision positioning. UWB has been developing for decades. The early research of UWB technology is mainly used to solve the problem of short-distance and high-speed transmission. Due to the lack of clear market demand at that time and the slow progress of relevant standards, UWB was once shelved by the market, and the short-range and high-speed communication market was gradually occupied by WiFi. The introduction of UWB technology by mobile phone manufacturers, especially the head effect of apple and other manufacturers, makes UWB technology obtain a wide equipment foundation and broad market space. Compared with Bluetooth and other positioning technologies, UWB has the characteristics of ultra wide bandwidth, high positioning accuracy and strong anti-interference ability. At present, UWB technology has been applied in consumer electronics and industrial fields. In the field of consumer electronics, UWB can be used for locating objects, digital car keys, senseless access control, senseless payment, smart home, etc. Industrial applications include industrial asset positioning, warehouse inventory management, personnel positioning in key occasions, AGV (automatic guided transport vehicle) indoor navigation in scenarios such as intelligent manufacturing, electric energy, coal mine and tunnel. The vehicle field is becoming a hot market of UWB. In January this year, Weilai et7 officially opened the lock list, and one highlight of this model is that it is equipped with the world's first batch of UWB smart keys and mobile phone UWB / ble keys, which enhances the convenience of entering and leaving the car body. Digital car keys equipped with UWB technology have become a trend. "Smart phones and cars, as the most important and core smart terminals in the future interconnection of all things, will also be the largest potential market of UWB technology. I believe that driven by mobile phone perception + smart car dual core, UWB application ecology will be a broad blue ocean market." Chen Zhenqi, founding partner and CEO of Beijing newrui core technology Co., Ltd., told China Electronics News. "The functions related to the mobile phone are the real applications of UWB. The most just needed function is to use the mobile phone as the digital key to realize the safe unlocking of the car. This is a just needed application realized by UWB technology with the mobile phone." Jessica Zhou, senior sales manager of qorvo UWB division, told China Electronics News. In addition, it is worth noting that Bluetooth headset may also become the application market of UWB. According to the data of canalys, a market research organization, TWS (true wireless Bluetooth headset) has reached 103.8 million in the fourth quarter of 2021, breaking through 100 million for the first time. "The music transmitted to the headset based on Bluetooth is compressed. We are envisaging a higher transmission rate based on UWB, which can transmit high fidelity and lossless music to the headset. This is a direction of future efforts." Jessica Zhou said. The chip should comprehensively consider the convenience, security and ease of use Airtag not only makes the market really pay attention to UWB technology, but also speeds up the industrialization process of UWB. The hardware core of apple airtag is the UWB chip U1 launched at its press conference in the autumn of 2019. Large chip manufacturers such as NXP semiconductor and qorvo have also successively launched UWB chips through self-research or market mergers and acquisitions to promote the ecological layout of software and hardware. Among domestic enterprises, huanxu electronics has the supply capacity of UWB module products, the trial mass production of UWB series system chips of nurui core has been completed, and Hanwei microelectronics and other enterprises have also successively released UWB chip products. According to Jessica Zhou, UWB chip is a short-range communication transceiver chip, and qorvo also integrates the transceiver chip into SOC with MCU. In financial payment and other scenes with high requirements for security level, it can be combined with security se (security module) to make special guarantee. In terms of performance, downstream customers will pay attention to the positioning accuracy, response sensitivity, anti-interference ability of the UWB chip during positioning, power consumption, battery power supply of the product, etc. at the same time, they will also comprehensively consider the convenience, safety and ease of use. "In addition to the advantages and disadvantages of positioning performance, UWB chip, as a component of intelligent equipment of downstream manufacturers, can comprehensively consider the convenience, safety and ease of use of manufacturers. For example, the compatibility of general protocol, the difficulty of chip redevelopment, the fit with other parts of equipment and system software, etc.; it is even related to the size of chip and the form of packaging process. Once it is not fully considered in chip design Considering the factors of convenience, security and ease of use, the development difficulty and cost of manufacturers are bound to increase, and the market competitiveness of chips will naturally decline. " Chen Zhenqi said. The ecological support of software and hardware is also the key to UWB industrialization. "In product design, customers need the support of software, hardware and other aspects, so they will pay attention to the maturity of the full set of reference design to shorten the design cycle of the product." Jessica Zhou said. Industrialization also needs to strengthen ecological protection As a technology that is improving market awareness, the industrial development and large-scale application of UWB also need to improve the industrial chain and strengthen the industrial ecology. In terms of ecological construction, UWB related organizations and enterprises have deployed. In 2019, hid global, NXP, Samsung and other enterprises established Fira alliance to support the construction of UWB's industry ecology. The alliance supports enterprises to develop use cases in a wide range of business areas, define, standardize and certify products to ensure interoperability, and cultivate a stronger UWB ecosystem to achieve rapid technology deployment. Mobile phone manufacturers such as apple and Xiaomi are also building their own UWB ecosystem. Jessica Zhou said that the establishment of ecological alliance can better define some standards and corresponding application cases on interconnection and provide manufacturers with standards and process references. The construction and promotion of UWB ecology based on smart phones is the basis of UWB scale. The popularization of smart phones, the cooperation of peripheral supporting enterprises and the promotion of application cases with practical value can more effectively promote the large-scale application of UWB. "At present, the chip is relatively mature in hardware, and the establishment of software ecology is a relatively long-term process. We hope to cooperate with more peripheral manufacturers to build a larger interconnection market and use more application cases to trigger users to use UWB functions." Jessica Zhou pointed out. For the chip function, Jessica Zhou said that oorvo's second-generation UWB chip has been put on the market and is also doing the research and development of the third-generation chip. It will continue to optimize the sensitivity and other hardware performance, promote the software development for a long time, and promote the UWB chip to achieve greater application volume and better cost performance. For the domestic UWB industry, industrial elements such as standards and talents still need to be improved. Chen Zhenqi said that the biggest challenge of UWB at present is the lack of perfect industrial chain support. With the increasing popularity of UWB industry, a large number of companies engaged in UWB chip development are also "rising to the top" quickly, but there is still a lack of standardized chips, so it is difficult for practitioners to form a joint force to achieve the same standard and interconnection as Bluetooth. In addition, there is a shortage of UWB professionals, which is also related to the environment with a large gap of domestic semiconductor talents. UWB chips with good functions and smooth application have high requirements for the comprehensive ability of technicians, and the employed enterprises and personnel are also mixed in the environment of following the trend. This is also an important issue affecting the development of UWB, which requires the whole country to further strengthen its support for the cultivation of semiconductor talents. "It is hoped that the industry partners engaged in UWB will work together to build a unified industry standard, work together for win-win results without barriers, and achieve real UWB interconnection, so as to make the industry have greater development and brighter prospects." Chen Zhenqi said. (Xinhua News Agency)
Edit：Li Ling Responsible editor：Chen Jie
Source：CHINA ELECTRONICS NEWS
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