Andrew Zignani, Research Director for ABI's Strategic Technologies team, is known for his deep analyses of the technological evolution and long-term prospects of wireless connectivity. NXP asked Mr. Zignani to evaluate the market for UWB-enabled IoT applications with this question in mind: where do we stand today in the expansion of UWB into the IoT?
Ultra-Wideband is not a new technology. Initially positioned as a data transfer technology in a similar vein to Wi-Fi, UWB was unable to build success for various reasons, including power restrictions. Since then, the technology has repositioned itself, moving towards an impulse radio-based, secure ranging and localization technology, built upon the IEEE 802.15.4a standards. Additional security extensions being added to the IEEE 802.15.4z standard provide UWB with the ability to provide secure, authentic, centimeter-level accurate distance and location measurement.
Apple’s decision to bring the U1 chip to its iPhone 11 and iPhone 12 series of devices in late 2019 and throughout 2020 gave significant attention to UWB technology. Samsung introduced UWB within its Galaxy Note 20 Ultra and Z Fold 2 in August 2020 and has since incorporated UWB into its latest Galaxy S21 Ultra and Galaxy S21+ devices released in January 2021. Most recently, Apple and NXP announced plans to offer beta UWB development tools that interoperate with the U1 chip in supported Apple products, thanks to access to Apple’s Nearby Interaction protocol and API. This increased mobile market presence will help to lay the foundation for UWB’s future success across a wide range of IoT applications. This article looks at identified use cases for UWB in the IoT.
To learn more about the specific IoT challenges and opportunities along with the estimated market size, be sure to read ABI Research's latest commissioned whitepaper “Ultra-Wideband (UWB) for the IoT – A Fine Ranging Revolution?”.
Figure 1: HID Global and NXP demonstrate hands-free access with UWB.
Commercial and residential access control is perhaps the most natural extension of UWB’s initial activities within the automotive secure access realm. UWB tracks the user’s exact location in relation to the entrance or exit, their security credentials and grants access instantly—hands-free and without human interaction. UWB offers protection from relay attacks, making it well suited for secure access applications. UWB can also detect if the user is inside or outside the building, as well as if they are walking from or towards an entrance or exit, preventing unauthorized access. Multisession support also helps to prevent tailgating, ensuring that doors re-lock after the user has gained access, preventing others from following.
UWB can also enable more advanced digital key capabilities. Residential users can share credentials with friends and family, granting them temporary access to their home as required. Similarly, room-hosting platforms can leverage digital keys to provide access to guests without relying on the transfer of physical keys, reducing issues ranging from loss of keys to theft prevention.
There is clear momentum for UWB access control solutions. Key members of the FiRa Consortium™ include a number of industry leaders within the access control realm. HID Global, NXP and Samsung showcased hands-free access control at CES 2020. The growing presence of UWB within the automotive keyless entry realm will also act as a catalyst and proof of concept to wider home and commercial deployments of digital keys.
Until recently, UWB was perhaps best known for its deployment within a number of RTLS applications. Various assets have UWB tags attached to them, communicating with anchors deployed around a factory, warehouse, healthcare environment or other location. This ensures that the exact real-time location an the item is known, allowing it to be located when required. UWB’s ability to deliver centimeter-level location accuracy, ultra-low latency and robustness in harsh environments has enabled it to build success in many commercial environments for more stringent asset and vehicle tracking applications, including vehicle navigation and collision detection, high-value tool and equipment tracking and worker safety applications.
In most deployments, enterprises can take advantage of multiple use cases to compound ROI and other benefits. For example, within healthcare environments, RTLS solutions can track available beds to understand and maximise utilization, trace valuable equipment to prevent theft or losses, monitor staff for hygiene compliance purposes track patient and staff location for safety purposes and ensure the right people have access to the right areas and equipment at all times. In recent times, RTLS has also been deployed for social distancing and contact tracing, helping to minimize the risk of infection spreading. The NFL and the NBA used UWB throughout 2020 to monitor social distancing and contact tracing within their bubbles, helping to ensure the sporting season could continue.
More recently, UWB is also being positioned as a personal item tracking technology for consumer applications. Smartphones with UWB are capable of locating items such as keys, wallets and other personal items with a UWB tag attached to them. While BLE solutions dominates this space historically, UWB provides more accurate, directional and low-latency positioning. However, as with other UWB applications, BLE is also leveraged in conjunction with UWB in these personal trackers for initial pairing and handover.
In April 2021, Apple unveiled its AirTag solution which contains UWB, BLE and NFC technology. Shortly after, Samsung officially launched its Galaxy SmartTag+ tracker. Combining UWB and BLE, the SmartTag+ enables AR Finding as part of its SmartThings Find service. Users can be visually guided to their lost device using their smartphone’s camera, making it much easier to precisely locate their items. Users can tag items as missing and other Galaxy device owners can help to locate lost items as part of a crowdsourced network. This could also help to create new services for mobile operators and insurance companies, leading to new business models and additional value for end users.
As UWB becomes more ubiquitous within mobile devices, it could make it easier to navigate large buildings and offer valuable new services. Users can find a specific store in a shopping center, the right platform at a train station, the correct gate at an airport or the right car park space in a parking structure. It also has the ability to provide direct marketing and provide companies with foot traffic analytics. UWB has the ability to provide highly accurate positioning within buildings, unlike GNSS, which does not function inside. While other technologies, such as Wi-Fi and BLE, can also provide indoor navigation capabilities, UWB can offer much higher accuracy as well as strong performance in non-line-of-sight scenarios. This could enable more accurate wayfinding and proximity marketing services.
Figure 3: Xiaomi demonstrates UWB point-and-trigger functions (Image Source: Xiaomi).
As the name suggests, point-and-trigger applications involve pointing a UWB-enabled smartphone towards other UWB-enabled connected home devices, such as speakers, televisions, light bulbs or thermostats. While voice control is optimal for simple tasks that are easy to describe, certain home automation and control tasks can be cumbersome to describe. Thanks to UWB’s high accuracy and direction capabilities, the smartphone can detect exactly what device is being pointed at and automatically open up a relevant control panel on the smartphone display.
This can then be utilized to turn a TV on or off, select the colour and brightness of a smart light bulb, change the radio station, song or adjust the volume on a speaker, turn up the thermostat or seamlessly cast video and audio from the mobile device to a television or speaker. In addition to control panels, smartphones could also pull up additional information, such as song lyrics, further recommendations and other new ways of engagement. This could help to drive valuable new entertainment services within the home.
Xiaomi recently demonstrated UWB leveraged within a variety of smart home devices such as fans, lamps, and smart speakers—highlighting the growing potential of the UWB ecosystem. Apple is already incorporating UWB in its HomePod mini smart speaker to allow streamlined handoff of content such as music, calls and podcasts with iPhones.
Embedding UWB within smart home devices allows such devices to respond to specific user movements automatically, such as turning on a light, playing a preferred playlist or adjusting the temperature. When a user enters or leaves a room, the settings follow them. The presence of the user activates these pre-set settings without involving any interaction, button pressing or switches, instead enabling highly automated and personalized smart home services. Personal profiles could be set up for homes with multiple occupants, enabling certain smart home devices to adjust to their own unique preferences.
UWB can determine that the end user is within a specific room, or even in a more specific location, enabling more contextual interaction. For example, UWB embedded within a notebook PC could detect when the user is sitting at a desk and securely lock or unlock the device as required, preventing any intrusion. The low latency of UWB ensures a seamless and immediate experience. Users won’t be frustrated waiting for lights to turn on or pointing to a device that takes too long time to open up the correct control panel.
Combined, these efforts are leading to growing opportunities for UWB across a growing number of markets. However, successful IoT deployments of UWB require strong, interoperable solutions.
Find a deep analysis of UWB in the IoT at ABI Research's latest commissioned whitepaper “Ultra-Wideband (UWB) for the IoT – A Fine Ranging Revolution?”.
For more information, you can follow Andrew at @abi_zignani
Andrew Zignani conducts research into the rapidly changing wireless connectivity market, with a particular emphasis on market forecasts and qualitative insight covering Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, 802.15.4, NFC, HaLow, WiGig, and other emerging wireless standards and protocols.