NXP combines UWB and radar for IoT
NXP Semiconductor has combined its UWB chip with short range radar in industrial and IoT applications.
The Trimension SR250 has been designed to add a radar channel with simple on chip processing for people detection in IoT applications, flowing a design for automotive UWB chips for remote keys.
“The Trimension SR250 is the industry first to combine UWB secure sensing and short range radar with on chip processing,” said Sunil Jogi, marketing manager for UWB at NXP. “The SR250 supports on chip presence detection and doppler effect and this can act as a wake up for the whole system, and them more complex processing can be handled odd chip using machine learning for example.”
“If the SR250 is in the TV and sensing the environment using UWB the TV processor can be in sleep, then if someone walks in, it can detect that and switch on the TV or music,” he said.
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Other radar algorithms require complex processing on the applications processor but the on chip radar processing allows the SR250 to be used as the wake up and security element in a design. Jogi highlights a smart lock that could use the radar to detect a person and then use the UWB for the secure locking or unlocking.
The previous SR150 UWB chip had ranging and angle of arrival with two receive channels and the SR250 provides this with +-5cm distance accuracy and +-3deg angular accuracy. The SR250 has a singe PHY and RF and a single sensor sending UWB signals and capturing reflections. It has three receive channels to integrate the radar functionality and the radar is time interleaved with a 5us slot in 1s with the rest used for the UWB functions. This provides fast localisation in under 10ms for ToF measurement for example for tracking a forklift, says Jogi.
The chip is built on a more advanced process than SR150, although NXP would not comment on the pricing for indistrila and IoT applications.
The SR250 is sampling now with general availability by the end of 2025.
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