HOW IT WORKS
Ultra-wideband explained
YOU WILL LEARN What Ultra-wideband is and how it works alongside the U1 chip
Your iPhone can tell altitude, distance and now direction thanks to the inclusion of a brand new chip in the iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro. The new U1 chip was mentioned during Apple’s By Innovation Only event in September 2019, with the company promising it would deliver “amazing new capabilities” in future.
The U1 chip enables Ultra-wideband (UWB) capabilities on iPhone. UWB is a wireless communication technology that has two major advantages over Wi-Fi and Bluetooth – it is less power hungry and more secure. While the tech has actually been around for over a decade, UWB has yet to be popularly adopted.
In the early 2000s, UWB was widely used in the medical and military fields, and efforts were made to incorporate UWB into Bluetooth 3.0, but the attempt was abandoned in 2009. Today, it is used in some warehouses to track forklifts, and a GPS/UWB system currently provides location-based audio guides in a number of Icelandic tourist spots.
Theoretically, UWB can be used in place of current wireless devices and operations, such as USBs, printing, peer-to-peer connections and HD video streaming. The automotive industry is also considering adopting UWB as an alternative to Bluetooth in wireless car keys. Bluetooth is notoriously easy to hack;
UWB tech would enable you to unlock your car as you approached it, and help prevent break-ins. Until recently, however, the high cost of UWB chips has made it prohibitive for companies to cost-effectively incorporate the technology into consumer goods.
For now, the iPhone 11 series is the only mass-manufactured consumer device with UWB built in. As yet, no other smartphone manufacturer has announced plans to add UWB to its range. However, Sony and Samsung are part of the FiRa Consortium, a group of 13 companies looking into the adoption of UWB. If they choose to follow Apple’s lead, UWB could soon become the new staple in smartphones like Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.
The technology
UWB transmits data across a large 500MHz bandwidth over very short distances, with an ideal operating range of up to 200m, and can penetrate through obstacles like doors. Combined with a high data-rate transfer ability of between 460Mbps and 1.6Gbps, it’s ideal for use with smart home devices or wireless peripherals such as printers and projectors.
Ultrawideband can be used like GPS for highly accurate indoor device tracking
Another unique feature of UWB is its ability to identify relative position and movement of a device using a concept called Time of Flight (ToF). This is the radar element of the tech; the sender can tell the position of the receiver by sending out a signal and measuring the time and location of the reply. The precise calculation of physical distance also helps enhance security, as it cuts out the chances of a relay station attack – a method used by hackers to trick devices by feeding them false location and signal strength data.
UWB broadcasts a precisely timed pulse across a very wide spectrum of channels. Both sender and receiver must be co-ordinated to send and receive pulses, within an accuracy of trillionths of a second. Again, this makes UWB far more secure than Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. It also produces less radio frequency than Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, allowing it to transfer data with less noise and degradation in quality, so that it’s not only faster than Wi-Fi but more efficient.
Apple’s plans
At the iPhone 11 launch, Apple said that the focus of the U1 chip was “spatial awareness”. The audience was presented with a more intelligent version of AirDrop (the quick wireless transfer method for images, documents and links) that, thanks to the Time of Flight indoor positioning concept, could detect the direction of the sender and receiver’s iPhones.
The U1 chip is being used to power Apple’s Find My services in the latest iPhones, making it easier to locate lost
devices to within a few centimetres. This is far more accurate than in previous versions of Find My, which used a combination of Bluetooth, cellular, GPS and WiFi to show a range anywhere between 6m to 30m.
Thanks to Ultra-wideband, U1-equipped devices can send signals even when low on power, making it easier to find a lost or stolen device. Apple says that the U1 chip can also be used to send notifications to nearby iPhones, enabling anyone to identify a device and return it to its owner once it is placed in Lost mode through the Find My app.
The U1 chip is currently limited to the iPhone 11 series, but is expected to make its way to all Apple devices in 2020. The U1 chip is also expected to feature in Apple’s plans for a Tile-like location tracker (dubbed ‘AirTag’ in internal iOS 13 code). With UWB built in, these trackers would be able to survive for months without having to be recharged. Combined with UWB’s high accuracy, this would enable you to easily track down lost keys, wallets and other small items.
If UWB was to become widely adopted, the large data handling means you could easily send sizeable files across a room to another phone or computer, or stream 4K films using AirPlay. And the incredible accuracy means you could figure out where a friend is at a festival, track a pet, automatically lock/unlock a door based on your proximity, be notified of a product offer in a particular aisle in a supermarket, and experience improved augmented reality apps. Here’s hoping that UWB becomes the new norm for our nextstage devices.