Issue link: https://resources.mouser.com/i/1520712
13 Qorvo 2024 UWB Is Best When Precise Location Matters Unlike other radio frequency (RF) technologies, UWB was specifically designed to enable precise, secure, and real- time measurement of location, distance, and direction, while concurrently supporting two-way communication. One of UWB's key strengths is that it uses a signal's time of flight (ToF) to calculate the distance between devices. This method is much more accurate than the received signal strength indicator (RSSI) method typically used with other wireless technologies such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth ® . UWB signals also use much greater bandwidth than prevalent narrowband technologies. As a result, UWB signals are extremely short due to the inverse relationship between time and bandwidth. This means that the time resolution of UWB signals is very high, enabling accurate ToF determination. Additionally, the high time resolution and short wavelength of UWB signals make it much more resistant to multipath interference and fading. These capabilities enable UWB to pinpoint people and things with great accuracy. In fact, UWB is 100 times more accurate than other RF technologies like Wi-Fi for location, delivering accuracy within centimeters instead of meters. This is very important when tracking or locating small objects, or if your application requires you to know if something is on one side of a wall versus the other. Furthermore, UWB has very low latency, which means that, unlike Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, it can be used for real-time location. It is 50 times faster than GPS, with updates up to 1,000 times per second; that's three thousand times faster than a standard Bluetooth Low Energy beacon. This makes UWB ideal for automation systems and applications involving fast-moving objects, like drones, and it opens the door to many exciting new use cases. The large bandwidth also makes UWB systems suitable for high-speed communications. Because UWB leverages ToF information combined with distance-bounding communication techniques defined by the IEEE 802.15.4a/z standards, it also provides much greater security than other wireless technologies used for sensing distance and location. How UWB Measures Location Unlike other radio technologies, UWB does not use amplitude or frequency modulation to encode the information that its signals carry. Instead, UWB uses short sequences of very narrow pulses (only two nanoseconds) using binary phase- shift keying (BPSK) or burst position modulation (BPM) to encode data. These narrow pulses also have clean edges, allowing precise determination of arrival time and distance in the presence of multipath effects caused by signal reflections.