Ultra Wideband Technology (UWB) is the hot new topic in the town, especially after Samsung unveiled the Galaxy Note20 Ultra with a UWB chip in tow. Last year, Apple released the iPhone 11 series with a UWB chip (U1) under the hood. Many believe that Ultra Wideband is the new wireless protocol that is going to replace Bluetooth, but is that statement anywhere close to reality? Well, in this article, we are going to explain everything about Ultra Wideband Technology (UWB) so that you get a clear picture of what is to come. With that in mind, let’s now go through the article and learn about UWB in complete detail.
Here, we are going to discuss all the aspects of Ultra Wideband Technology: from its very definition to the working mechanism. You can click on the link below and easily jump to the relevant section.
What is Ultra Wideband Technology (UWB)?
Before anything, let us learn what exactly is Ultra Wideband Technology in lucid terms. Just like WiFi and Bluetooth, Ultra Wideband Technology (shortly known as UWB) is a wireless technology. It leverages radio signals to communicate and transfer data between different devices. But there are some distinct characteristics of UWB that make it a powerful radio technology.
Thus, UWB constitutes as a short-range Personal Area Network (PAN) that features high frequencies, high transfer speed, low-power consumption and precise positional accuracy. A perfect standard for quickly discovering and sharing huge chunks of data between devices.
Now that you have got the basics, let us get a bit technical. As I mentioned above, UWB operates in very high frequencies, to be precise, within the range of 3.1 to 10.6 GHz. In other words, this is simply another category of radio spectrum. Coming to the working mechanism, a UWB-equipped device emits signals (called pulse radio) over a large bandwidth in all directions. By the way, since the frequencies are so high, it does not interfere with other nearby radio signals which is a big advantage.
The primary difference between UWB and Bluetooth/WiFi is the lack of positional and directional abilities in the latter. While Bluetooth did bring direction finding with 5.1 release, it’s not as fast and accurate as UWB. On top of that, Ultra Wideband consumes much less power than Bluetooth and WiFi because UWB generates radio energy at specific time intervals instead of random frequency response.
Apart from that, there is a categorical difference in how all three technologies leverage radio frequency. While Bluetooth operates within the frequency band of 2.4GHz (channel bandwidth of 1MHz), WiFi generally operates in 2.4GHz and 5GHz (channel bandwidth of 20 – 40MHz). Lastly, UWB operates from 3.1GHz to 10.6GHz (channel bandwidth ranges from 500MHz to 7.5GHz). By the way, the more the channel bandwidth, the better the transfer speed.
UWB has been in use for many past decades, most notably by the US Army for radar imaging. However, the technology was authorized for unlicensed use in 2002 by the Federal Communications Commission in the US. Later, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) standardized UWB as another wireless radio technology.
Similarly, Samsung has incorporated a UWB chip developed by NXP on the Galaxy Note20 Ultra. It will help you instantly discover nearby contacts and share files using Google’s Nearby Share feature. Apart from that, you can get a taste of UWB technology in the new SmartThings Find app. Using Augmented reality, you can find the position of other UWB-equipped devices. That’s really cool, right?
So that was all about Ultra Wideband Technology and how this fascinating new wireless protocol works. While we have discussed its definition, working mechanism, pros, cons, etc., the question remains: where will Ultra Wideband Technology end up in a few years? Is UWB going to replace Bluetooth?
