In recent years, Ultra Wideband (UWB) technology has developed significantly all over the world.
under the tide of intelligent travel, a large number of UWB players actively participate in the automotive application practice of UWB, among which the digital key application is the most typical and has a broad market prospect.
In 2023, Geely Krypton, BYD Teng D9, Zhanjie and Xilai joined the UWB digital car key queue, which was called “the first year of UWB digital key landing” in the industry.
At the “2024 Automotive Digital key Technology Forum” sponsored by Galaxy, Dr.
Chen Zhenqi, co-founder, general manager and chief technology officer of Nurex Technology, proposed: “this year will be the first year for the outbreak of UWB applications.
” So what are the advantages of UWB over other technologies such as NFC and BLE? What scenarios can be used? What kind of problems do you face in the process of getting on the bus? What are the current car specification-level product solutions? In the topic sharing of “innovative practice of UWB Technology in Automobile Digital Keys”, combined with the practice of Nurex UWB chip, Dr.
Chen Zhenqi gave answers respectively.
Chen Zhenqi, Co-founder, General Manager & Chief Technology Officer of Nurex Technology, principle and performance advantage of UWB technology, UWB (Ultra Wide Band) is a kind of wireless carrier communication technology.
UWB transmits data by sending and receiving extremely narrow pulses with nanosecond or even subnanosecond.
One information bit can be mapped into hundreds of pulses, so it occupies a wide spectrum range.
In the future, UWB technology will be the most widely used, promising and valuable new technology in the field of wireless communication technology.
The reason for this is inseparable from the technical advantages of UWB: first of all, because the ranging, radar positioning and sensitivity are all proportional to the signal bandwidth, UWB can achieve high-precision, centimeter-level positioning-compared with other indoor positioning technologies, the minimum bandwidth of UWB can reach 500MHZ, which is better than the common communication systems such as BLE, WiFi, 5G and so on.
Secondly, as a time-domain short pulse signal, compared with IEEE802.
11a, IEEE802.
11b and BLE, UWB has stronger anti-interference under the same code speed.
At the same time, because the ultra-wideband radio transmits single-cycle pulses with very short duration and low duty cycle, the multipath signals can be separated in time, so UWB has strong anti-multipath ability and can adapt to the complex indoor environment.
Finally, UWB technology has natural security.
The security of UWB is shown in two aspects: on the one hand, time-hopping spread spectrum is used, and the receiver can only solve the transmitted data when the transmitter spreading code is known.
on the other hand, the transmission power spectral density of the system is so low that it can not be received by the traditional receiver.
Generally speaking, UWB has multiple advantages such as communication, location, perception and so on.
it is a new technology of synaesthesia and can realize rich scene applications.
In the field of intelligent vehicles, the applications of UWB mainly include digital keys, live detection, kick radar, wireless charging, autonomous valet parking (AVP).
In which digital keys are the mainstream applications, commercial landing has begun in recent years.
The technological development and application challenges of automobile digital keys, the automobile industry has a history of one hundred years, and car keys have also gone through four stages of development: the first stage is the mechanical key.
the second stage is the remote control key, which uses radio signals to unlock or lock the vehicle remotely in the 1980s and 1990s.
The third stage is the beginning of the 21st century, smart keys become popular, can achieve non-inductive access and unlock, and the positioning accuracy is also good.
With the development of smart phones, consumers began to enter the digital life, due to technological limitations, smart keys can not be integrated into the smartphone.
Therefore, the demand for digital key appears, and the industry begins to devote itself to the innovation and research and development of digital key technology.
At present, the digital keys mainly include NFC, BLE, UWB and other technical routes.
According to Dr.
Chen Zhenqi, judging from the permeability of digital keys, NFC is installed more frequently in CCC2.0. In the new model, BLE, UWB and other digital key schemes are getting on the bus quickly.
At present, BLE has become the standard of mobile phone, so the digital key of BLE technology can realize the full support of mobile phone, but there is still a gap in positioning accuracy and security of traditional BLE, so BLE technology is doing star flash upgrade-star flash can greatly improve the positioning accuracy.
The application scenario of BLE digital key is usually a demonstration of a car in open space, but because the frequency band of BLE 2.
4G is a narrowband signal, even after star flashing, the coverage of the application scene is insufficient, and the signal is vulnerable to interference and multipath.
Therefore, UWB is much better than BLE in anti-jamming and multipath ability.
In terms of cost, Bluetooth costs less than UWB.
From the perspective of the industrial chain, the most critical upstream of the UWB industry is the chip supplier.
In recent years, domestic UWB chip enterprises have actively accelerated the layout.
With the unremitting efforts of domestic manufacturers, some enterprises, such as Nurex, have achieved mass production of vehicle specification-level UWB chips, breaking the monopoly of international manufacturers and greatly reducing the cost of UWB.
However, due to the high initial investment in UWB technology, there is still a certain gap.
Generally speaking, the market penetration of UWB is relatively low, but it is in the stage of rapid development.
The core application scenario of UWB digital key has covered the identification area, welcome area, lock-out area and driving area.
, figure source: Nurex core, reduce cost and increase efficiency, Nurex core UWB “second generation” digital key scheme, for the automotive industry, “reducing cost and increasing efficiency” is still the main theme.
According to statistics, the cost of a set of UWB digital keys was 1000 yuan, but now it has dropped to less than 500 yuan.
As far as the cost of bicycle is concerned, it has been reduced to a great extent.
Specifically: the first generation of digital key scheme basically uses five or six anchor points, the cost is high.
Let UWB technology into low-end models is an effective way to “reduce costs”.
At present, cars with 100000-200000 yuan have a large market share, while UWB is only used in about 300000 models. Dr. Chen Zhenqi said that in view of the above plan, the number of anchor points should be reduced from 5-6 to 1-2.
In theory, the single AOA anchor point scheme can realize the positioning of the whole body and the whole scene with a single anchor point, but it also brings many problems.
For example, when a single anchor point is placed in the car, shaded areas will be produced in the later stage of A, B and C columns, which makes it difficult to locate multiple shadow areas.
at the same time, when the scene is obscured outside the vehicle, it will also be difficult to locate the shaded scene.
, single AoA anchor point scheme in the car | Source: Nurex core, if you add another anchor point, realize the double An in the car.
OA anchor point, can be a good solution to the body A, B, C column occlusion.
However, the in-vehicle double AoA anchor point scheme still has some problems, such as the location of the anchor point is limited, and it is relatively difficult to block the scene.
At the same time, UWB ranging in the occlusion scene, to a large extent, can form an effective ranging, but once the angle measurement is occluded, the angle information is basically not available, and high-end car customers also prefer metal film, if you do an anchor in the car, you can not stick a good metal film.
, double AoA anchor point scheme in the car | Source: Nurex core, therefore, Nurex core put forward the “second generation” digital key scheme.
This scheme can give full play to the role of UWB, add angle measurement function to each anchor point of “411” / “4 # 2” of the traditional digital key scheme, and enhance the user experience.
According to Dr.
Chen Zhenqi, “in the previous scene, each anchor point can only be measured, and only two or even three anchor points can form a stable positioning.
” Now we add angle information, under the premise of not reducing the number of anchor points, even in the case of occlusion, an anchor point can form a stable positioning, thus greatly improve the positioning accuracy and occlusion ability, but also solve the problem of window and signal occlusion.
” At the same time, he also mentioned: “in addition to reducing the cost of the chip, we can also achieve the goal of cost reduction by implementing more functions in the digital key scheme.
” First of all, after adding the angle information, replace “420” with “4” 1, and add flexible layout at the same time.
In the ranging scene, the cross layout can be realized by basically adding UWB anchor points on the four corners of the vehicle and measuring the angle through triangulation.
Tesla is a typical multi-anchor layout, which uses positioning and ranging signals to form multiplexing with NFC and Bluetooth, thus reducing the number of anchor points.
Secondly, in addition to the digital key, UWB has added more functions, including positioning, radar, communication, payment functions and so on.
In this way, the comprehensive function of multiple systems can be realized in one system, and a more inclusive cost reduction can be achieved.
At the same time, it can improve the scene experience, let more vehicles carry UWB system, and realize the connection with mobile phone.
The ursamajor “Ursa Major” series accelerates the UWB technology on the bus.
Nurex is committed to becoming a leader in the field of wireless communication chips.
at present, the company’s products are fully focused on the direction of UWB, and attach great importance to the chip technology over-test-there are already 5 chip FiRa over-test, through FiRa2.
0,HPRF,1-to-many and other mode test items.
It has the largest number of UWB chips certified by FiRa Alliance in the world.
At the same time, Nurex is the world’s first UWB SiP full system (including SoC and RFFE chips and SiP packaging design) independent design and production of enterprises.
Of particular concern is the Nurex ursamajor “Ursa Major” series of high-performance, high-integration, low-power UWB SoC/SiP chip products, which can be widely used in smart phones, smart cars, smart homes, wearable devices and other scenarios and product applications.
At the same time, the related products achieve full-ecological and full-mode support– in line with FiRa, CCC alliance protocols, IEEE 802.15.4z and IEEE 802.15.4-2020 protocols, China/FCC/ETSI/JPN UWB radio standards, CH1~CH15 full-channel coverage, and the latest UWB standard of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Dr. Chen Zhenqi said that in terms of product performance, the Nurex UWB chip has achieved the highest sampling rate of the industry’s largest bandwidth 1.
3GHz and 4GSpS.
High-performance ranging and positioning, radar sensing and high-speed data transmission are realized on a low-cost and low-power chip.
In addition, Nurex Technology pioneered UWB ultra-low power wake-up receiver WUR, which has excellent anti-multipath capability.
In terms of important performance parameters, compared with mainstream European and American chips, the second generation of industrial regulation products of Nurex technology achieves less than 0.
5cm in ranging accuracy, while the first generation of vehicle gauges is about 1cm.
ranging can reach more than 300m in the case of chip full power.
angle measurement range can achieve full space angle measurement.
head diameter dynamics can be larger than 40dB expansion dynamics, radar sensitivity has reached-133dBm.
Specifically, Nurex’s ursamajor “Ursa Major” includes three series: ursamajor800, ursamajor700 and ursamajor600.
, figure source: Nurex core, in which the ursamajor700 series is a completely independent design of automotive specification products, specializing in a variety of automotive electronics UWB application scenarios.
The ursamajor700 series includes NRT 81750 and NRT 81730 chips, both of which have high security and low power consumption.
Nurex, NRT81750 has passed the AEC-Q100 qualification certification in November 2023, becoming the world’s first Fira certified UWB chip and the first UWB chip in China, and has achieved mass production in December 2023.
Looking ahead, UWB cars are expected to account for 15% of total car shipments by 2026 and 40% by 2030. Dr. Chen Zhenqi said frankly that at present, Nurex has reached cooperation with more than 30 Tier1 manufacturers and established business relations with more than 10 domestic vehicle manufacturers.
In the future, more application scenarios such as personalization, vehicle sharing, car sharing and fleet management will be expanded based on UWB digital keys.
Nurex will always be committed to providing high-performance UWB positioning chips to fully support functional applications such as digital car keys, CPD breath detection radar and kick radar to help industrial partners further open up the smart travel ecology.
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