Will 2025 Be Full Steam Ahead for Ultra-Wideband Adoption

By Andrew Zignani | 4Q 2024 | IN-7589

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As we approach the end of 2024, there have been a number of recent announcements involving Ultra-Wideband (UWB) technology that are highlighting the growing diversity of UWB usage scenarios, alongside key landmarks to the wider adoption of the technology. This includes new UWB-enabled devices and chipset announcements, the proliferation of UWB chipsets and platforms, several UWB-related acquisitions, continued development of the UWB standard and industry consortia, and demonstrations of UWB technology across new use cases. These are all pointing to 2025 being a key year for UWB technology's proliferation into the mainstream.

Over the last few months, there have been some very significant developments related to UWB technology.

In October 2024, Nordic Semiconductor signed a Letter of Intent (LOI) to acquire UWB chipset startup NOVELDA. To date, NOVELDA has specialized in ultra-low power UWB sensing applications, but given the continued evolution of the UWB standards that combine sensing, fine-ranging, and low latency data communications, Nordic's acquisition will allow it to target new UWB applications across smart home, building automation, and other consumer electronics applications. This acquisition fills a gap in Nordic's existing portfolio when compared to competitors such as NXP, Infineon, STMicroelectronics, Qorvo, Renesas, and Qualcomm, which have all recently acquired or developed UWB as part of their product offerings. This also significantly complements its existing product offering of low-power Wi-Fi, 802.15.4, and Bluetooth® Low Energy (LE) solutions, allowing it to create unique combinations and differentiation within a crowded market. This development shows that vendors across the ecosystem see strong potential in UWB technology, and intensifies the pressure on other competitors to invest in the technology in the years to come.

This follows on from another UWB-related acquisition of Sewio Networks by HID Global in August 2024. Sewio has been a pioneer in UWB Real-Time Location Systems (RTLSs) for indoor tracking applications within manufacturing and logistics environments, providing low-latency, highly accurate centimeter-level tracking for personnel, forklifts, digital twins, and other valuable assets. In recent years, the company has been growing significantly and expanded to new regions, and the acquisition by HID Global will enable it to provide greater flexibility to its customers looking to deploy indoor location solutions. This builds on several location-related acquisitions from HID Global such as Bluvision in 2016, which expanded its Bluetooth® LE product offering, alongside Bluetooth® wayfinding solution provider Connexient and healthcare RTLS specialist GuardRFID. ABI Research expects further consolidation in the RTLS industry as other vendors take a multi-technology approach to better explore growth opportunities and target new regions.

Vendors are also demonstrating new use cases for the technology that were previously more theoretical. In October 2024, NXP announced that its UWB Trimension solutions will be deployed by Shenzhen Tong, the provider of automatic fare collection systems for public transport within the city of Shenzhen. The solution is a hands-free UWB ticketing solution that embeds a UWB reader in transit gates and uses secure ranging to a UWB-enabled mobile device to identify the user for contactless ticketing. This means that a device can remain in the user's pocket or bag while they are admitted automatically through the gates, speeding up the admission time, reducing queue times, and providing an overall better user experience. In October, NXP also announced that its UWB family was being deployed by Audi to enable hands-free, secure access as part of Audi's Premium Platform Electric (PPE). This will enable drivers to unlock and start their cars hands-free using a UWB-enabled device. This announcement follows the September 2024 unveiling of the Trimension® SR250, the first single-chip solution to combine processing capabilities alongside UWB radar and secure ranging capabilities for a wide variety of applications.

The adoption of UWB in mobile devices, wearables, and other products is also continuing to grow. While Apple continues to deploy the technology in all of its smartphones, watches, AirTags, and AirPods Pro 2 charging cases, other vendors such as Motorola (moto tag) and Blackview (BV8900) have developed UWB tracking tags utilizing chips from Qorvo and Giant Semi. Meanwhile, Google's latest Pixel Watch 3 now supports UWB, in addition to its Pixel Pro line of smartphones, while Huawei, NIO, Motorola, Xiaomi, Blackview, and Samsung all support technology in their flagship devices. However, with the recent arrival of Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite, which leverages the previously announced Wi-Fi, Bluetooth®, and UWB FastConnect 7900 chipset, there is strong potential that, in 2025, many more devices beyond the Ultra and Pro series will start to adopt UWB technology, boosting the UWB ecosystem further.

Of course, more work still needs to be done to accelerate the adoption of UWB technology. This will be achieved through several developments, including:

• Multi-Vendor Availability: The broader UWB ecosystem is growing, compounded by recent investments in UWB from numerous large-scale chipset providers, including Infineon, STMicroelectronics, NXP, Qualcomm, Nordic Semiconductor, Qorvo, and Samsung, alongside other players and startups in the market such as SPARK Microsystems, ChipsBank, GiantSemi, Mauna Kea Semiconductors (MKSEMI), Tianjin Ruixin Technology, and Ultraception. This will ensure continued innovation through competition and unique approaches to different UWB use cases, and will enable device Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) to have better choices and provide unique differentiators to their products, helping to scale the market further.
• Chipset Innovation: Related to the above, continued chipset innovation on metrics such as size, power consumption, range, multi-protocol combinations, and cost will all be vital in enabling a more accelerated adoption of UWB technology.
• Favorable Regulatory Environment: Key to the future success of UWB is having a favorable spectrum allocation policy around the world. In October 2024, the UWB Alliance presented at the 13th Americas Spectrum Management Conference, highlighting the future growth potential of the technology and the need to maximize the potential and efficiency of the spectrum. These debates will be critical in ensuring that the potential and performance of UWB can be realized across multiple different applications in the years to come.
• Continued Standards Development: UWB technology is evolving at a rapid pace, with ongoing development of UWB Next Generation (IEEE 802.15.4ab) and continued technical innovations from the leading vendors and industry consortia. These enhancements, including added channels and operating frequencies, interference mitigation techniques, and sensing capabilities, will help enable UWB support a greater range of use cases, such as those that require greater device density, low-power consumption, or high data rate streaming. Meanwhile, other incentives from the Audio Engineering Society to develop a Task Group for high-resolution, low-latency UWB audio can also lead to new opportunities within this space. Vendors such as SPARK Microsystems have already demonstrated and partnered to develop UWB audio solutions. In October 2024, the Canadian company announced a collaboration with French audio brand Focal to develop the DIVA UTOPIA loudspeakers. Utilizing SPARK's SR1020 solution, it uses UWB to connect wirelessly between both speakers, while preserving the audio quality.

The last few months have demonstrated that UWB is here to stay and the foundations laid and ABI Research expects the technology to build upon those foundations in 2025. While challenges remain, UWB's unique benefits, the continued development of new features, new entrants to the market, and the ability to target and create valuable new consumer and Internet of Things (IoT) applications will all help accelerate the technology's rollout in 2025 and beyond.