With the application of UWB gradually entering the deep water zone, the public's understanding of UWB is getting deeper and deeper. At the same time, some cognitive misunderstandings about UWB are also gradually emerging, and there are many guesses and misjudgments about the application scene and quantity of UWB.

The biggest misconception of all is that UWB is a mobile technology and there seems to be no place to use it except for mobile phones. When professional investment institutions went to investigate UWB chip company, they almost invariably asked the same question: which mobile phone manufacturers have you signed contracts with to supply UWB chips?

The main reason for this misunderstanding is that UWB was first introduced into the public eye by Apple, followed by Samsung and Xiaomi, especially Xiaomi's "one-finger connection" technology, which left a deep impression on people and produced the concept of "UWB is for mobile phones" in their minds. Many investment institutions are even looking forward to "UWB chips are to be sold to mobile phone manufacturers". A wave of UWB chip company launched research, investment.

UWB, similar to WIFI, Bluetooth and GPS in mobile phones, is an accessory function of mobile phones. In the future, it will also become a standard feature of mobile phones because it is an essential application. Then, to investigate the status of UWB chip in mobile phones in the future, just grab WIFI, Bluetooth and GPS and compare them.

The conclusion is brutal: Despite the fact that we use WIFI, Bluetooth and GPS every day, we can't find a single chip in any of our phones that supports them.

The most typical Bluetooth chip, because Huaqiangbei imitators Apple's TWS headset created three listed companies dedicated to doing Bluetooth chip, driven by the wealth effect overnight emerged nearly a hundred Bluetooth chip companies, domestic Bluetooth MCU once fell to less than 1 yuan a piece. No company, however, can say which brand his Bluetooth chip is in.

Because they don't use them! In order to maximize benefits, WIFI, Bluetooth, GPS are the phone's main chip SOC pull out a few antennas. So, why should the mobile phone master chip leave a piece of sky to the UWB chip?

Further back in the history of GPS into mobile phones, the problem becomes clearer. GPS was first introduced in mobile phones as a module. It was soon replaced by GPS chips because of their cost, size and heat. But before the chip companies could cheer, mobile phone engineers abandoned GPS chips for cheaper RF chips, using the extra computing power of the phone chips to write code to solve the GPS position.

Then, Qualcomm, MTK and other mobile chip companies introduced next-generation SOC chips for mobile phones, and GPS has become a standard feature, allowing users to navigate by pulling an antenna.

What happened later was even more magical: Since GPS didn't have a communication function, some of the industries that used GPS chips the most, such as vehicle monitoring and children's phone watches, simply used mobile phone chips instead of separate GPS chips. Fortunately, UWB communication is not the phone chip bite back.

The latest news is that Qualcomm has joined the FIRA alliance, and the purpose is self-evident.

Therefore, the hope of UWB chip on the phone, ultimately can only be dust to dust, dust to dust.

Not only that, the existing mobile UWB application, also encountered a bottleneck.

Under the condition that the existing ground support is almost zero, in order to use UWB in the mobile phone, the polar coordinate system centering on the mobile phone can only be adopted so that a mobile phone can locate the label. In order to measure the Angle, there must be at least two antennas. The UWB chip can be small, but the size of the antenna is limited by the laws of physics, and the internal space resources of the phone are extremely limited. It can be said that it is extremely difficult to insert the UWB in the polar coordinate system into the phone, and only Apple really put the UWB into the phone for mass production. It is difficult for ordinary mobile phone companies or solution companies to solve this problem, so they can only turn to the original UWB chip factory, and it is still unknown whether the original chip factory can fulfill its mission in the face of such a difficult mobile phone design problem.

Due to the high power consumption of the first-generation UWB chip, Bluetooth is needed for detection and detection, which is also the reason why AirTag can only work for about 30 meters in the best case, while UWB can work for 300 meters easily if the power is fully turned on. Major mobile phone companies have different expectations for UWB, and the trend of mobile phone UWB application is complicated and confusing.

In addition to these problems, the AirTag is a bit of an embarrassment because it has been found to do so little that it has now devolved into an expensive toy.

And Xiaomi "a finger link", with the release of psychological shock gradually calm, also gradually submerged in the long river.

All of these will be solved with the improvement of UWB ground system. UWB can be located with only one antenna, and the difficulty of UWB entering the mobile phone will be greatly reduced. UWB will provide indoor and centimeter-level three-dimensional position information just like GPS, which will make the mobile phone outstanding.

Different from GPS, UWB can set up and provide services from an isolated community, shopping mall, school, hotel, etc., and gradually realize the networking and coverage of regions, cities, countries and even the whole world. It is expected to take 3-5 years to reach the coverage level that mobile phones can initially accept.

Therefore, UWB into the mobile phone has a long way to go, UWB chip into the mobile phone more than a flash in the pan.

So will UWB, as many people think, have almost no place to use it other than your phone?

No. A slight shift in perspective will open up a whole new world of UWB applications.

The new perspective restores the mission that UWB should have shouldered, that is, ranging, positioning, simply put, location service. UWB will be the next generation of GPS and Beidou, capable of providing indoor and outdoor three-dimensional location information with centimeter-level accuracy.

Location information is one of the most basic information of human activities. Human production and life cannot live without location information at any moment. For example, walking, doing housework, working, eating, drinking and defecating, they all make corresponding actions according to the perceived location information, and human itself is an automatic system based on location information.

With the progress of soft and hard IT means such as ARM, human beings have built a variety of automatic machines to improve production efficiency and living comfort. These machines can perform various calculations, judgments and automatic operations according to the results of temperature, pressure, and even human faces. But so far, one of the most common and useful functions has been unable to be realized. It's location-based automation, where drones and robots can't do delicate work without human control.

The reason for this is that there is no location information. The machine does not know where it is, does not know where the target is to be processed, and does not know where to send the target when the work is done. Such jobs as drone delivery, robots doing housework, caring for the sick, moving house, cleaning Windows, sweeping floors, mowing the grass, serving dishes in restaurants and washing dishes, or going door-to-door to deliver rice and vegetables when the epidemic closes off communities, can't be done automatically.

The emergence of UWB will put an end to this situation. All kinds of automatic machines will be equipped with eyes, and their application scenarios will only depend on human imagination. Users from all walks of life will spontaneously discover their own application methods of UWB, and UWB solution companies will become the next tuyair just like navigation and mobile phone solution companies in the past.

UWB will bring about a revolution, the key trigger is cost, as soon as the cost is down to an acceptable level, it will explode at any time.

In addition to misunderstandings about application scenarios, there is also a lingering doubt for professionals about the two protocol versions of UWB, 802.15.4A and 802.15.4Z, which are referred to as 4A protocols and 4Z protocols. This question is actually from the same root as the above question, because the question is, is 4Z protocol used for mobile phones and cars, and 4A protocol used for non-mobile phones and cars?

This doubt evolution, fermentation to now has formed a tacit voice: 4Z (chip) is the aristocracy is used for mobile phones, cars, 4Z contains 4A and technology is more advanced and more lofty, and 4A (chip) is the civilian, can only be used for low-end industries, industrial users little amount, due to the early appearance, now facing obsoleted doom.

It is necessary to start from the development process of UWB protocol to solve this doubt. 4Z agreement is NXP led to write, NXP do this power is, after 10 years of continuous investment in NFC, NFC almost by NXP exclusive possession, with NFC everywhere, taste enough NFC sweet NXP targeting the next target, is very likely to replace NFC UWB.

This is because an important physical property of UWB can be used for encryption, identity authentication, and it is impossible to crack this property is the radio speed of light flight time, and the speed of light is impossible to exceed. For example, UWB can provide an accurate, unfakable proof of presence.

Communication, positioning, unbreakable encryption, is simply the perfect mobile payment, access control means. Therefore, NXP spare no effort to invest in the research of UWB, and from the top layer of the protocol layer to start, leading the development of a new generation of UWB standard that is 802.15.4Z, and quickly launched the first in line with the 4Z standard of UWB chip sample, even before mass production is in a hurry to take the sample and Mercedes-Benz, BMW and other top car factory cooperation, To promote the research and development of the new-generation vehicle UWB system, which integrates access control, payment and positioning functions, the publicity in the major media is also carried out simultaneously.

So it's not hard to imagine that the key to the 4Z protocol is encryption. However, the original intention of the UWB protocol is to make specific provisions on the physical layer and connection layer in order to ensure interconnection, which no one dare to touch. These provisions have been basically formed in 4A protocol, otherwise DW1000 could not be made, and DW1000 would not be able to interconnect with Apple later.

Looking at the phone, it is not difficult to understand that the UWB in the phone must support the 4Z standard due to the expectation that it will act as a key, access card, credit card, etc. This can also explain why many UWB chip companies repeatedly emphasize that the chips they are going to make are 4Z standard. In addition to lofty, there is another meaning that they want to sell to mobile phone manufacturers.

After a clear understanding of this matter, we can basically understand that 4A protocol is fully able to meet the requirements of many scenarios whose demands are limited to ranging and positioning applications (the main battlefield of UWB applications), and location service does not need the cost of encryption.

According to the standard set of the chip industry, the price of the later 4Z chip is certainly higher than or far higher than the 4A chip facing the fate of "obsoleted". Until today, many downstream companies that do UWB application still choose DW1000 of 4A standard for their projects. The application research of 4Z is still at the beginning stage, some are studying and digesting 4Z standard, some have not even got the documents of 4Z standard, and some leading companies even give up the 4Z standard. The DW3000 of 4Z is still too lofty. The market is making the most rational choice at this point.