2020 Apple's autumn conference was held at the Jobs Theater on September 11. At this conference, one detail is that the iPhones are all equipped with U1 chip that supports ultra-wideband (UWB) technology. According to official publicity, the new technology will significantly improve the Spatial Awareness capabilities of Apple mobile phones. So, what does spatial awareness mean? What exactly can the U1 chip do? What is UWB technology? All of these will lead to a new round of smart device application innovation? The answers to these questions will be revealed next. The Spatial Awareness is the ability to perceive orientation which is positioning ability. According to Apple's introduction, iPhone equipped with the U1 chip further enhances the positioning function of the mobile phone. It can not only sense the location of its own mobile phone, but also the location of other nearby mobile phones. Based on the space awareness capability provided by the U1 chip, when using AirDrop (AirDrop is the function of wireless file sharing provided by Apple devices), you only need to point your iPhone to someone else’s iPhone, and the system will prioritize it (the closer you are, the higher the priority), allowing you to share files faster. iPhone11 can achieve the application effect of "the closer you get to me, the first you get a response". Positioning is a familiar topic for all of us. We often use APPs such as Google Map or Baidu Map, which have positioning and navigation services. Location services help us indicate directions and increase our sense of security as well as control, which bring great convenience to our work and life. Therefore, what is the difference between UWB technology and the positioning technology we use now? The commonly used positioning technologies now mainly include satellite positioning and base station positioning. Satellite positioning is a technology that uses artificial earth satellites to perform point position measurement. And it is currently the most widely used and most popular positioning technology for users. The characteristics of high precision, fast speed and low cost of use are very prominent. The well-known satellite positioning systems include the United States’ Global Positioning System (GPS), China’s Beidou (BDS), Europe’s Galileo, Russia’s GLONASS. The principle of base station positioning is similar to radar. Radar positioning is to emit radar waves and perform spatial position measurement based on the reflection of the target. The base station works like a "radar". Usually, a mobile phone will be under the signal coverage of multiple base stations in a city. The mobile phone will "measure" the downlink pilot signals of different base stations to obtain the signal TOA (time of arrival) or TDOA (time difference of arrival) of each base station. According to the measurement result, the coordinates of the mobile phone can be calculated combined with the coordinates of the base station, Here is a picture to show it....

At present, there are more and more options for wireless SoC chips, from the European and American manufacturers to the domestic semiconductors. How to choose a suitable wireless chip for product development? The following aspects need to be considered. Wireless Technology: The current popular low-power wireless technologies are including Wi-Fi, small wireless, LoRa, Bluetooth, Thread, ZigBee, NFC, Private 2.4G, NB-IoT, 2G, 3G, 4G, etc., The wireless technologies commonly used in factory automation and smart home including Wi-Fi, small wireless, BLE, Thread, ZigBee, NFC. The following figure compares the advantages and disadvantages of these different wireless protocols in data transmission bandwidth, distance and power consumption. An appropriate solution should be selected according to the usage scenario. Wi-Fi: Wi-Fi is suitable for high-speed video data transmission, but its power consumption is relatively high. At present, there are fewer mainstream low-power Wi-Fi chips on the market. The core uses ARM M3 or M4 core, which runs simple RTOS, and only supports 802.11b/g/n mode, low bandwidth, but can meet the application of dry battery power supply. ZigBee: The best choice of smart home, the status is being challenged by BLE MESH. But after the launch of ZigBee 3.0, various systems can be interconnected, and the compatibility of the platform is much better than before. Sub-1G: Because of its stability and long transmission distance, it can be used in various industrial control fields. The TX peak current is large, but the system is in sleep mode at other times. Thus, the overall power consumption is low. NFC: The function is which mobile phones must be carried with. Public transportation systems and access control systems are mostly adopted by RFID and NFC solutions. LoRa: Unique spread spectrum technology, +20 dBm transmit power, low power consumption, long-distance, the disadvantage is low bandwidth utilization and low data throughput. Power Consumption Always keep the end users’ experience in mind. If the battery fails, even the most ideal product will be abandoned. What kind of power supply method can be used? Coin cell, dry battery, lithium battery? Coin cells are popular due to their low cost, small size and lightweight. Considering that the battery life of these products is crucial, and the coin cell can only provide a peak current of about 5 mA without being damaged. If you drive a larger current peak, the battery capacity will be affected. RF transmit power: The transmit power of Bluetooth is restively low. Usually, only 5 dBm transmit power is supported, generally refer to 0 dBm transmit power according to specifications. ZigBee, small wireless transmission power can reach 20 dBm. (More than 20 dBm cannot pass the safety test). MCU operating power consumption: Because the same ARM core of the wireless SoC is used, the power consumption is similar to each other. But it is necessary to evaluate the MCU running time from wakes up statu...

The traditional way of personnel clock-in is to use fingerprints. By registering personal fingerprints in advance, press the fingerprints on the fingerprint attendance machine to confirm the punch-in of personnel on duty. However, the fingerprint attendance machine has the problems of low efficiency, high cleanliness requirement of fingerprints, and the possibility of punch-in failure. Especially at the special moment when the novel coronavirus is raging, people should try to minimize contact between people, and extra attention should be paid to disinfection and avoiding cross-infection of items that are in public touch. For office workers, they need to touch the fingerprint attendance machine during on and off duty. It is difficult to avoid the potential risk of cross-infection. After all, at workplaces, the one who comes into contact with the most people every day, except for door handles, is the fingerprint attendance machine. So, how to realize the attendance of employees in this special period? In the face of complex personnel contact, the best way to avoid cross-infection is contactless clock-in. At this time, Beacon attendance punch-in has become a good alternative. RF-star launched the smart Beacon work attendance solution, using a contactless attendance system to help employees complete punch-in through mobile phones and assist companies to avoid the risk of cross-infection. As long as the mobile phone turns on Bluetooth and the personnel pass by the work attendance device, the personnel identification and his attendance can be realized. Help company managers get rid of various inefficient attendance management methods such as fingerprint attendance, USB flash disk copying attendance data and signature attendance confirmation. The Bluetooth Attendance solution is based on Beacon technology. Broadcast Beacon signals regularly through the Beacon product RF-B-AR1, RF-B-AR4. The punch-in location binding information is carried in MAC address, UUID, Major, Minor and others in the broadcast packets. The personnel uses a mobile phone with Bluetooth enabled to search for the Beacon signal in the air to confirm the punch-in attendance and location. In the Beacon work attendance system, walk into the office area, directly take out the mobile phone, open the APP and punch in finished. No need to punch in on the attendance machine with fingerprints. The Beacon work attendance solution is flexible and convenient, but it also faces the risk of being cheated to punch in. Here come questions. Can Beacon punch-in solve the problem of entrusted attendance? How to confirm that the employee has arrived at the office? Can Beacon punch-in solve the problem of entrusted attendance? There are many APPs and tools for cheating on attendance on the Internet. Roughly the following methods: 1. Location simulation, cracked by GPS and baseband module 2. Wi-Fi simulation 3. Root or jailbreak the phone 4. Customize the mobile phone, crack from the hardware In addition t...

The SIG released a new generation of Bluetooth Core Specification 5.2 at CES2020 in Las Vegas, including LE ISOCHRONOUS, LE PWOER CONTROL, LE ATTRIBUTE PROTOCOL. This article talks about LE ISOCHRONOUS. 1. BT 5.2 LE AUDIO Market As we all know, before BT 5.2, Bluetooth audio transmission used the classic Bluetooth A2DP mode for point-to-point data transmission. Now the emergence of Bluetooth LE Audio has broken the monopoly of classic Bluetooth on the audio market. At the 2020 CES, SIG announced that the new Core Specification BT 5.2 supports multi-stream Audio which will enable the transmission of multiple, independent, synchronized audio streams between an audio source device, such as TWS headphones, multi-room audio synchronization. LE Audio will also add Broadcast Audio, enabling an audio source device to broadcast one or more audio streams to an unlimited number of audio sink devices. Broadcast Audio can be widely used in airports, bars, gyms, cinemas, and conference centers and other sites. The emergence of BT 5.2 hits a blow to the Apple TWS, and provides support for multi-channel simultaneous audio transmission. 2. BT 5.2 LE Audio Transmission Principle The Bluetooth LE Isochronous Channels function is a new method of using Bluetooth LE to transfer data between devices. This feature provides a mechanism to ensure synchronization between multiple sink devices receiving data from the same source. The protocol stipulates that each frame of data sent by the Bluetooth transmitter will have a time limit, and the expired data (data that violates the time-bound validity period) that is not transmitted, is discarded. Consequently, the receiving devices receive data that is valid with respect to its age and acceptable latency to ensure the synchronization of data received by multiple slave devices. In order to realize the new function, ISOAL is a new layer in the Bluetooth stack which sits in the controller above the link layer. It provides flexibility in the way that lower layers of the stack and upper layers work together, allowing to provide data stream segmentation and reassembly service. The ISOAL provides segmentation, fragmentation, reassembly, and recombination services for the conversion of the SDUs from the upper layer to the PDUs of the baseband resource manager and vice versa. The ISOAL uses fragmentation/recombination or segmentation/reassembly operations to convert service data units (SDU) into protocol data units (PDU), or vice versa. The ISOAL controller accepts or generates SDUs through the supported 1M and 2M encoding PHYs. The maximum length of each SDU is the Max_SDU. Use the HCI ISO data packet to transmit the SDU to the upper layer or from the lower layer to the air. For the application requirements of LE connection mode and non-connection mode, the BT 5.2 LE AUDIO protocol specifies two data stream transmission framework models. 3. BT 5.2 Synchronous data stream transmission based on LE connection Connection-oriented isochron...

In recent years, thanks to the rapid development of new technologies such as IoT communication technology and artificial intelligence, domestic smart home products have passed through the three stages of automation, intelligence and IoT, and entered the era of whole-house intelligence. Giants from the communications, Internet, home appliances, home furnishing, real estate and other industries have released smart home strategies and laid out product ecology. The market competition is extremely fierce. In June 2021, the research institute IDC released the "Quarterly Tracking Report on China's Smart Home Device Market." The report shows that in the first quarter of 2021, China’s smart home device market shipped 46.99 million units, a year-on-year growth of 27.7%. In the smart home market, Apple entered the market earlier with the HomeKit platform, established a more mature ecology, and became the leading player in the smart home market. Relying on the iOS system to further increase the stickiness of Apple users, the HomeKit smart home platform has built a complete ecosystem of whole house intelligence through centralized management and intelligent operation. 1. HomeKit builds Apple fans smart home ecology Apple released HomeKit, a smart home platform, in 2014. In 2015, the first batch of HomeKit smart home products were released, which can control lighting, indoor temperature and other electrical appliances through iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. Since Apple itself does not produce HomeKit hardware, HomeKit is just a certification protocol, so manufacturers are gradually supporting the HomeKit protocol. Since the release of iOS 10, people can use the "Home" APP added to the iOS system to manage and control smart home devices that support the HomeKit framework. 1.1. "Home" centralized management HomeKit supports centralized management of devices on the "Home" APP, and no other APP is required for each smart device. However, judging from the products released on the market that support the HomeKit protocol, each product still has its own APP launched by the manufacturer to increase customer retention. The settings in the supporting APP are usually more abundant than the functions in the Home APP. For example, Aqara's smart sockets, detailed power consumption curves and statistics can be seen in the original APP. The "Home" APP covers four parts: accessories, scenes, rooms, and automation. (1) The concept of an accessory is well understood, which means that a single smart device is added to the APP. (2) Scene refers to the unified state of multiple devices into corresponding states at a certain moment. For example, the lunch break scene will contain closed curtains and closed lights. (3) The rooms are classified according to space to facilitate the unified management of multiple devices. (4) Automation is to set some conditions to trigger automatic execution of commands. Automation can actually be understood as a scene triggered by a specific condition, su...

With the advent of the Internet information age, mobile and portable smart products have drove countless enthusiasts crazy as soon as they were launched. Wearable devices have gradually developed from MP3 to wireless Bluetooth headsets and VR devices. The rapid growth of the wearable device market is closely related to the development of Bluetooth technology. With the popularization of Bluetooth 4.0 technology and the rise of mobile Internet, the application of Bluetooth technology has also developed from portable devices such as mobile phones and tablets to the Internet of Things, medical and other fields. The development of solutions based on Bluetooth technology is getting better and better. It brings new opportunities to the Internet of Things market. When talking about Bluetooth, we often hear words such as BLE, Beacon, iBeacon, Eddytstone, etc. What are the connections and differences among them? The following is a detailed explanation of the Bluetooth technology involved in common Bluetooth technical terms and applications. 1. Explanation of Bluetooth Technical Terms BLE: Bluetooth Low Energy. Beacon: Beacon is based on Bluetooth low energy proximity sensing by transmitting a universally unique identifier picked up by a compatible app or operating system. iBeacon: iBeacon is the name for Apple’s technology standard introduced in 2013, which allows Mobile Apps (running on both iOS and Android devices) to listen for signals from beacons in the physical world and react accordingly. Eddystone: Eddystone is a BLE format developed by Google in 2015. It’s opensource and multiplatform, so you can use it with both Android and iOS. The Bluetooth that we often say in our daily life usually refers to BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy). As the name shows, the current Bluetooth technology consumes very low power consumption. The power consumed by turning on Bluetooth on the phone for a long time is negligible. 2. The Origin and Classification of BLE The original specification was developed by Nokia in 2006 under the name Wibree. The company developed a wireless technology adapted from the Bluetooth standard which would provide lower power usage and cost while minimizing its differences from Bluetooth technology. The results were published in 2004 using the name Bluetooth Low End Extension. Wibree is a new radio frequency technology that can work alongside Bluetooth but using just a fraction of the power. The technology was marketed as Bluetooth Smart and integration into version 4.0 of the Core Specification was completed in early 2010. The BLE protocol stack is shown in the figure below. BLE is a set of protocols different from Classic Bluetooth, and the corresponding device does not implement backward compatibility. Therefore, BLE has formed three device types. 1) Bluetooth devices - Pre-4.0 devices - Bluetooth BR/EDR (Classic Bluetooth). A Classic Bluetooth device is able to communicate with other Classic Bluetooth devices and Bluetooth Smart Ready devices. ...

With the continuous evolution of the fourth technological revolution, the development of the Internet has also entered a new era of the "Internet +". In this era, many things will be connected to the Internet and become intelligent. Many emerging industries will open up huge markets. IoT technologies such as the Internet of Vehicles, smart logistics, and artificial intelligence have received widespread attention. And indoor positioning is one of them. Since the concept of Industry 4.0 was came out, the intelligence level of the manufacturing industry has been continuously improved, and the development of the Internet has also entered a new era of "Internet +". Many devices can access the cloud and become intelligent. Emerging industries are booming. IoT technologies such as the Internet of Vehicles, smart logistics, and artificial intelligence have received widespread attention. And indoor positioning is one of them. Indoor positioning is a huge market that has gradually been paid attention to in recent years. Because indoor scenes are very important for people's daily production and life, and location data is one of the most basic data dimensions. According to data provided by Nokia, people spend 87%-90% of their time indoors. The indoor space structure becomes complex, people have higher requirements for real-time and accuracy of the location. For example, it is becoming more and more difficult to find a car in a parking lot, find specific items, and locate relatives who have separated. The demand for indoor positioning has never been higher. With the outbreak of the epidemic, the spread control of the virus has become the goal of epidemic prevention measures. How to master the closure and mobility of personnel has become the focus. The demand for indoor positioning of personnel has ushered in another climax. Therefore, the indoor positioning market has potential explosion opportunities. Especially in recent years, with the advancement and popularization of communication technologies such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, UWB, and RFID, the application of indoor positioning has gradually spread. 1.The indoor positioning market is growing rapidly Global indoor positioning market distribution In the global indoor positioning market, North America has a 32% market share. Due to significant R&D and technological progress in indoor positioning technology, North America is expected to continue to lead the indoor positioning market in the future. Therefore, some North American companies are strategically adopting different levels of indoor positioning technology to gain a leading position in the market. The high-precision UWB technology and low-cost Beacon technology are developing rapidly in overseas markets. Europe and the Middle East account for 28% and 22% of the indoor positioning market respectively. The Asia-Pacific region accounts for only 18% of the market share, of which the vast majority of the market is in China. It is entirely due to the rapid eco...

The CC2640R2L recently launched by TI (Texas Instruments) is a 2.4 GHz wireless microcontroller (MCU) supporting Bluetooth® 5.1 features: LE Coded PHYs (Long Range), LE 2-Mbit PHY (High Speed), Advertising Extensions, Multiple Advertisement Sets, as well as backwards compatibility and support for key features from the Bluetooth® 5.0 and earlier Low Energy specifications. CC2640R2L and CC2640R2F both use a single-core software development kit (SDK) and a rich tool set to share a common and easy-to-use development environment. The low-power wireless microcontrollers CC2640R2F and CC2640R2L, both launched by Texas Instruments, can transmit and receive radio frequency signals with a larger range. CC2640R2L, as a low-cost version of CC2640R2F, is lower in price. Judging from the Bluetooth protocol supported by the chip, CC2640R2F supports BLE 5.0 protocol, and CC2640R2L supports BLE 5.1 protocol. CC2640R2L can use AOA/AOD for indoor positioning, which is very suitable for improving the performance of Internet of Things (IoT) applications. In terms of cores, both CC2640R2L and CC2640R2F are the same: 48 MHz ARM® Cortex®-M3 cores, and they both have 275 KB non-volatile memory, including 128 KB in-system programmable flash, up to 28 KB system SRAM, of which 20 KB is ultra-low leakage SRAM. Compared with CC2640R2F, CC2640R2L does not have a Sensor Controller Engine, so the cost of CC2640R2L is lower and it is more suitable for the application scenarios of basic transparent transmission function. CC2640R2L: Microcontroller Powerful Arm® Cortex® -M3 Up to 48 MHz clock speed 275 KB of nonvolatile memory including 128 KB of in-system programmable flash Up to 28 KB of system SRAM, of which 20 KB is ultra-low leakage SRAM 8 KB of SRAM for cache or system RAM use Supports over-the-air upgrade (OTA) RoHS-compliant packages 5 mm × 5 mm RHB VQFN32 (15 GPIOs) 7 mm × 7 mm RGZ VQFN48 (31 GPIOs) Peripherals All digital peripheral pins can be routed to any GPIO Four general-purpose timer modules (eight 16 bit or four 32 bit timers, PWM each) UART, IIC, and IIS Real-time clock (RTC) AES-128 security module Integrated temperature sensor Low power Wide supply voltage range Normal operation: 1.8 V to 3.8 V External regulator mode: 1.7 V to 1.95 V RF section 2.4-GHz RF transceiver compatible with Bluetooth low energy 5.1 and earlier LE specifications Excellent receiver sensitivity (–97 dBm for BLE), selectivity, and blocking performance Programmable output power up to +5 dBm Single-ended or differential RF interface CC2640R2F: Microcontroller Powerful Arm® Cortex® -M3 Up to 48 MHz clock speed 275 KB of nonvolatile memory including 128 KB of in-system Programmable Flash Up to 28 KB of system SRAM, of which 20 KB is ultra-low leakage SRAM 8KB of SRAM for cache or system RAM use Supports over-the-air upgrade (OTA) RoHS-compliant packages 2.7 mm × 2.7 mm YFV DSBGA34 (14 GPIOs) 4 mm × 4 mm RSM VQFN32 (10 GPIOs) 5 mm × 5 mm RHB VQFN32 (15 GPIOs) 7 m...

What can Bluetooth 5.0 do? What kind of Bluetooth 5.0 applications are available in the market? RF-star senior advisor XCODER has the following opinions. The applications of Bluetooth 5.0 are the same as that of Bluetooth 4.x. For the time being, Bluetooth 5.0 can replace the applications of Bluetooth v4.x. Even more, it can replace the original classic Bluetooth SPP transparent transmission applications because of its higher rate. Bluetooth Mesh protocol as a part of the Bluetooth 5.0 has great potential markets in smart home and Bluetooth light control. Many companies are already joined in Bluetooth Mesh smart home market, and finally use smart speakers as the Internet entrance of smart home. The following two paragraphs are from the SIG: “The strategic decision to adopt Bluetooth as the communications platform for our smart home strategy was an obvious choice for us,” said Lijuan Chen, Head of Alibaba A.I. Labs, the department leading consumer AI product development at Alibaba Group. “Bluetooth mesh is a wireless protocol that enables us to meet our customers’ scale, performance, and reliability requirements in the home. Bluetooth is already a proven, trusted, and widely used wireless standard, and we’re confident Bluetooth mesh will be the standard in home and building automation for years to come.” “Bluetooth mesh is one of many fundamental enablers of future IoT markets, allowing for robust, secure, and scalable connectivity across the smart home, commercial building automation, industrial environments, and beyond,” said Stuart Carlaw, Chief Research Officer, ABI Research. “Bluetooth mesh, in conjunction with Bluetooth beacons, can propel these environments towards greater automation, increased sensorization, and enable valuable RTLS services. Nearly 360 million annual Bluetooth Smart Building device shipments are forecasted by 2022.” What are the main Bluetooth 5.0 chips? Some mid-end & low-end Bluetooth chip manufacturers and emerging companies in China Mainland and Taiwan are also actively joining in Bluetooth 5 market. Such as Airoha, Telink, Freqchip, Maxscend, Barrot and Bekin. The biggest drawback of ZigBee is that it cannot communicate with mobile phones. Bluetooth Mesh is an emerging technology that enables real-time interaction between devices and mobile phones, and enterprises are definitely willing to invest in it. The appearance of the SIG leaders and Alibaba in various public occasions is a clear signal to us that new technology means new opportunities.