Open Standard Clarifies the Role of UWB vs Bluetooth

By _Ceva's Experts blog

April 30, 2024

The tracker-tag technology helping you to find your keys just got a lot better, enabling new use cases. Popularized by Apple, Ultra Wideband (UWB) has been standardized by the FiRa Consortium. The FiRa 2.0 specification defines UWB use cases for locating things, navigating indoors, and pointing and triggering. These cases highlight that when comparing UWB vs Bluetooth, UWB provides more-precise distance and orientation estimates. However, the two technologies aren’t alternatives but are complements.

Owing to their ubiquity and ease of use, smartphones enable many UWB use cases. Apple was the first to show what UWB can do, but the technology is about to become more popular. Qualcomm has implemented the technology, setting the stage for UWB to become as common in Android smartphones as it is in Apple iPhones. As more phones gain UWB, the installed user base grows, making it viable to add the technology elsewhere to enable new use cases.

Adding UWB capability requires new chip designs. Because UWB and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) work better together, Ceva has developed semiconductor intellectual property (IP) integrating the two. Moreover, the company has innovated technology to facilitate UWB’s coexistence with the newest Wi-Fi standards. Companies can employ this IP in chips for applications beyond today’s smartphones and smart tags.

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