As industrial IoT and automotive sectors, among others, are moving toward more automated applications that leverage the ability to sense presence, location, and gestures, Ultra-Wideband wireless technology is emerging as a key enabler for accurate and secure detection and activation.
NXP Semiconductors is advancing its ability to support those applications by integrating the presence awareness capabilities of UWB secure ranging, UWB radar sensing, and three-dimensional Angle of Arrival (3D AoA) positioning into a single chip for on-chip processing. That augments the value of using UWB secure ranging alone, which requires communication between two UWB-enabled devices to detect location or presence.
UWB radar, on the other hand, is a passive solution requiring only the single-chip IC, according to NXP. While NXP is an old hand at UWB radar, going back at least five years, more companies are starting to use UWB radar technology to develop new low-power sensing applications and devices, another example being Novelda, which won a Best of Sensors award at the Sensor Converge event back in June.
NXP’s new Trimension SR250 chip combines low-power short-range UWB radar operating at 6-8.5 GHz with the secure ranging technology and 3D AoA calculations for more efficient and accurate UWB mapping to enable use cases like automated activation of lights in a smart home, asset tracking in smart factories, collision avoidance systems in automotive, or even personal safety applications, like location monitoring of children, elderly people, or factory workers in a way that does not raise privacy issues that might come with camera-based surveillance. The on-chip processing of presence and motion detection also translates to lower power consumption
Philippe Dubois, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Secure Transactions and Identification, NXP, said in a statement, “The precise, secure and energy-efficient detection of presence, motion or location enables an almost unlimited number of new user experiences. Our customers across the consumer and industrial IoT will benefit from the reduced power consumption and the streamlined design process enabled by this industry-first solution.”
Sunil Jogi, Marketing Director, UWB, told Fierce Electronics, “There are multiple products and use cases supported using UWB’s existing ranging capabilities across the autonomous home and industrial IoT segments, in addition to mobile and automotive. Many of these applications can be upgraded with the presence detection enabled by the Trimension SR250’s radar capabilities, e.g. speakers with auto-playing or auto-sleep based on presence detection. In industrial applications, the addition of UWB-enabled presence detection capabilities can provide numerous safety enhancements in factory environments, such as danger zone detection.”
Jogi added, "SR250’s capability to provide ranging and radar capabilities in a single chip is enabling many new use cases with enhanced user experience, optimized efficiency and improved security, safety and privacy. Many of our module partners will enable these functionalities for autonomous home and industrial IoT segments." The chip will be generally available in the fourth quarter this year.
In addition to 3D AoA, the TRimension SR250 also uses time difference of arrival (TDOA), and takes time of flight (ToF) readings accurate to within ±5 cm. For use cases that require added security, it can be combined with the EdgeLock SE051W secure element. NXP also said the Trimension SR250 complies with the 3.0 technical specifications of the UWB sector’s FiRa Consortium.
Meanwhile, UWB radar also can be used to detect and track one or more people or objects when interfaced to a host processor running AI/ML algorithms, such as the i.MX family of applications processors, RW61x family of wireless MCUs or the MCX family of MCUs, according to NXP.