Packetcraft joins FiRa Consortium, announces UWB technology
Expanding its leading wireless software offering for semiconductor companies, Packetcraft has announced software for UWB technology. Further, the company has also joined the FiRa™ Consortium, an industry consortium dedicated to growing the UWB ecosystem and ensuring device interoperability.
Packetcraft’s UWB offering consists of a MAC layer for IEEE 802.15.4z and higher layer protocol software defined by FiRa Consortium specifications. Packetcraft is accelerating its time-to-market by creating UWB technology from the same building blocks used in its industry-proven Bluetooth low energy stack and 802.15.4 MAC for 2.4GHz. Packetcraft has also partnered with nanoelectronics research center imec to run its UWB protocol software on imec’s next-gen UWB transceiver. The combined offering is suitable for the development of commercial semiconductors with UWB ranging, direction finding, and localization capabilities.
“New UWB technology enables a future where micro-location and indoor ranging are as ubiquitous as GPS,” said Jason Hillyard, VP of Business Development at Packetcraft. “UWB ranging and direction finding, as specified by IEEE 802.15.4z and FiRa Consortium specifications, will enable the precise location of connected devices to be known, indoors and out. This will create entirely new use cases and product categories in consumer, commercial and industrial sectors.”
Packetcraft sees UWB and Bluetooth low energy as complementary technologies. Many consumer products, such as proximity tags, door locks, and ID badges, benefit by combining the ultra-low power consumption of BLE and the fine ranging capability of UWB. By adding UWB to its product portfolio, Packetcraft can offer a comprehensive, combined BLE and UWB software to low power wireless semiconductor manufacturers.
The software products for UWB will be available to lead customers in the second half of 2021.
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