Apple and Xiaomi will definitely use UWB technology in their cars

Speaking of UWB, few people probably know what it is and what it does. If you know it, you may know that it is a new technology for keyless entry in cars. But in fact, keyless entry uses very mature radio frequency technology. Why use it? In addition, those who are more in-depth may know that using UWB can directly use mobile phones as keys in the future. But in fact, domestic independent brands Xiaopeng and Weilai have adopted keyless entry and mobile phone Bluetooth key functions. Why do they still use UWB?

According to the relevant automotive patents and information released by Apple, iPhone 11 has been using UWB, and Xiaomi mobile phones have joined the UWB camp. It can be inferred that the cars of these two new forces will definitely use this technology in the future (Pirate Jack's guess is purely coincidental). Of course, the future application scenarios of UWB are not only keyless entry and welcome functions, but also V2X car networking. So this article summarizes and shares based on relevant information

• What is UWB

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• Why UWB? 

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• What are his advantages?

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• Applications in the automotive industry

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• Who is using UWB now?

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• UWB Supply Chain Market

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• Which players are there?

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• Future Prospects of UWB

I hope it can provide some foresight to automotive engineers and strategic management decision makers, and some inspiration to financial market researchers.

What is UWB? UWB stands for Ultra Wide band, a short-range wireless communication protocol that is essentially the same radio waves as Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. But it differs in that it operates at a very high frequency. UWB covers a wide frequency band, from 3.1GHz to 10.6GHz, so it is called ultra-wideband. In comparison, Bluetooth only covers a frequency band of 2.402 - 2.480 GHz. The same is true for Wi-Fi, which has some very narrow channels at 2.4GHz and 5GHz.

Another way is to think of it as a radar that can continuously scan the entire room and accurately lock onto objects like a laser beam to discover their location and convey data. As early as 2002, UWB was approved for civilian use by the Federal Communications Commission of the United States. Earlier, some people believed that UWB could become the next generation of data transmission standard, but it was not as good as WIFI in terms of transmission distance, speed, power consumption, and industrial cost. However, it has been reborn since 2018.

Why use UWB? What are its advantages? UWB transmits pulse signals, which are different from Bluetooth and WIFI continuous wave signals. This gives it two unique functional advantages: precise positioning (about 5cm) and extremely high security. These two characteristics make UWB suddenly have the possibility of rebirth after 20 years of silence. Compared with other current communication technologies, it has strong anti-interference ability, low power, ultra-large bandwidth, and theoretically low cost.

Although Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and Wi-Fi have benefited from very widespread market adoption today, they lack accuracy in positioning capabilities and have weak anti-interference capabilities, so we can answer the question at the beginning: NIO and Xiaopeng directly and aggressively use Bluetooth keys, but few European and American OEMs are willing to use them so aggressively and directly. And compared with UWB, the radio frequency technology commonly used in keyless cars currently has relatively little or no security, and it mainly relies on the strength of the radio frequency signal to make judgments, so a Tesla car was stolen one year using the method shown in the figure below.

Application in the automotive industry According to information from NXP chips, the use of UWB technology can promote innovation in automobiles and provide new experiences for consumers in the following aspects.

• Remote parking, opening and closing doors and windows, etc. High-security remote key. Mobile phone interconnection, mobile phone can be used as a key, and the interior of the car is monitored. Convenience, automatic locking when leaving the car, vehicle welcome mode, and car location search. V2X, facility positioning, micro-navigation driving assistance, precise parking, such as navigating to the charging port in the future to plug in and charge directly, etc.

Currently, the mass-produced vehicles include all new Jaguar Land Rover models, BMW's latest iX and some Volkswagen Audi models. Mercedes-Benz, GM and Tesla will adopt it starting in 2022.

This is related to electronic security, which is why in 2019, Europe's largest automobile club ADAC and Austria's ÖAMTC tested 273 cars, of which only Jaguar Land Rover models were the only cars that were not vulnerable to keyless entry attacks. In fact, the main reason is that it uses UWB keyless technology. The main functional highlights of UWB cars are the positioning-based car welcome mode, such as Land Rover approaching lights, popping up handles, and BMW iX can directly use iPhone or Iwatch as a key. This design principle is actually similar to the patents released by Apple and the latest UWB introduction in the Apple Developer Community.

Apple Developer Community has a detailed introduction to UWB, including sensor layout and function implementation.

Therefore, UWB is currently more widely used in keyless entry, its extended welcome function and mobile phone replacement of keys.

Who are the players in the supply chain? According to Techno System Research Report, the UWB market will have 200 million UWB technology chips starting in 2021, and as high as 1.2 billion by 2027. The automotive industry will become the second largest market, with more than 150 million chips in the automotive market by 2027. According to EE Times' 2021 UWB Market Research Report, the adoption rate of UWB in new cars will reach 15% in 2025 and 23.3% in 2027.

As for the industrial chain, the UWB supply chain can be divided into three parts: bottom-level chips, module solutions, and application integrators. Currently, the bottom-level chips in the automotive industry are dominated by NXP, Renesas, Microchip, etc. If Apple enters the automotive industry in the future, it will definitely adopt the U1 series chips. In addition, there are actually related companies in China, such as Nanjing Woxu Communication, Wenzhou Yanchuang IoT, etc.

For application integrators, traditional suppliers Bosch and Continental are actively promoting their own solutions.

Future prospects are obvious. The current applications are mainly for keyless entry and welcome mode based on its precise positioning function and the function of mobile phones replacing keys. In the future, due to its centimeter-level precise positioning function, as a communication signal, V2X may have more space in the future, such as autonomous driving AVP Autonomous valet parking indoor parking positioning.

This is why more and more car manufacturers are beginning to pay attention to the application of UWB technology. With the deployment of precise positioning and IoT facilities, the automotive market of UWB may be much larger than the forecast in the above report.

Of course, the current UWB technology lacks a unified standard, and each manufacturer uses its own solution, resulting in the inability of systems to interconnect. This has affected the popularity of the technology to a certain extent. Currently, FiRa Members are working hard to promote the standardization and industrialization of UWB.

Main reference articles

Deliverable D2.1 5GCAR Scenarios, Use Cases, Requirements and KPIs -Antonio Eduardo Fernandez, Alain Servel, Jerome Tiphene, (PSA Group), Mikael Fallgren, Wanlu Sun (Ericsson), Nadia Brahmi (Bosch), Erik Ström, Tommy Svensson (Chalmers), Diego Bernardez (CTAG), Jesus Alonso-Zarate (CTTC), Apostolos Kousaridas, Mate Boban, Markus Dillinger (Huawei), Massimo Condoluci, Toktam Mahmoodi (KCL), Zexian Li, Juergen Otterbach (Nokia), Mathieu Lefebvre (Orange), Guillaume Vivier (Sequans), Taimoor Abbas, Peter Wingård (Volvo Cars). pdf available for download.

An Ultra-wideband system for vehicle positioning - Jerzy, jacek, piotr pdf is available for download.

Using Ultra-Wideband Technology in Vehicles for Infrastructure-free Localization - Rusheng Zhang ∗ , Lin Song ∗ , Adhishree Jaiprakash ∗ , Timothy Talty † , Ammar Alanazi ‡ , Abdullah Alghafis ‡ , A. Ahmed Biyabani § , and Ozan Tonguz ∗ PDF download

Apple U1 Ultra Wideband (UWB) Analysis - techinsights PDF downloadable

Automotive Manufacturing Testing for Ultra-wideband (UWB) Digital Key - pdf Downloadable

UWB Automotive use cases - NXP

Explore UWB-based car keys - Apple 

Ultra-wideband Technology to Secure the Connected Car - arrow divisions

Ultra-wideband Market Outlook-EE TIMES

Application scenarios_UWB integrated application in V2X scenarios - Xiao Bo, Distinguished Expert of Chengdu New Energy Vehicle Alliance, Executive Secretary General of the Internet of Vehicles Alumni Association of University of Electronic Science and Technology of China