Since Apple popularized UWB technology, there have been more consumer-grade locator products on the market based on positioning functions.
In the soon-to-be-released “2024 China High-Precision Positioning Industry White Paper”, positioning application scenarios on the market are divided into four major categories. Among them, IoT consumer products including locator products are a very important market, and their shipments The volume is expected to be the largest among positioning products such as UWB and Bluetooth.
This article will take stock of the consumer locator products that have been launched on the market.
01
AirTag
Airtag is considered an epoch-making product in consumer locator products. Before this, there were only some similar products based on Bluetooth on the market.
Airtag incorporates UWB technology for the first time, which gives Airtag higher positioning accuracy compared to Bluetooth Tag.
Technically speaking, Airtag combines the characteristics of UWB + BLE technologies. Most of the time, BLE works (because of power saving), and when it is necessary to find items accurately, it will wake up and use UWB.
In a point-to-multipoint scenario (without positioning network), to give full play to the capabilities of UWB, products such as mobile phones need to have array antennas, so that precise positioning can be performed based on angle direction finding + ranging. It is reported that iPhone mobile phones are not available for the time being. Mobile phones add multiple antennas to UWB, and to achieve UWB’s precise positioning capability, it can be achieved through other sensors such as inertial navigation, combined with algorithms.
At present, Qualcomm has released a chip set that integrates UWB functions. For Android phones to fully utilize the capabilities of UWB, they need to solve the problem of multiple antennas.
02
Bluetooth Tag
There are already many Bluetooth Tag manufacturers on the market, and dozens of manufacturers can be found on JD.com that can provide Bluetooth Tags.
The most representative manufacturer is Huawei. In addition, Yunliwuli, Tuya Smart, Lanke Xuntong, Hony Yunjia, Kunlun Zhilian and other manufacturers have similar products.
This type of Bluetooth Tag product is mainly based on RSSI positioning of BLE. Of course, the positioning accuracy is not high, but fortunately it has low power consumption and low cost. According to our understanding, in addition to being used in consumer scenarios, this type of Bluetooth Tag product is also used in B There are also a large number of applications in end scenarios.
However, the next version of Bluetooth will release Channel Sounding, which is expected to greatly improve Bluetooth’s positioning capabilities.
03
child locator
Both Bluetooth tags and Airtags need to be centered on mobile phones. However, UWB is currently not popular enough in mobile phones, and it is difficult to add array antennas to mobile phones. Therefore, children’s locator products that are not mobile-centric have also appeared on the market. That is the “positioning monkey” product.
This product is produced by Core IoT. The product includes a “palm radar” (held by an adult) and a safety buckle (worn by a child).
This product combines UWB + Bluetooth AoA + Bluetooth RSSI multiple positioning technology products. There are multiple antennas in the palm radar, which can determine the direction of the safety buckle on the child, and guide adults to find the child through the direction of the indicator light.
With the rapid development of UWB and Bluetooth industries, more and more consumer positioning products will appear on the market.
This paper is from Ulink Media, Shenzhen, China, the organizer of IOTE EXPO (IoT Expo in China)
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