DecaWave shows ultrawide band isn't dead

By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk

Irish embedded silicon developer DecaWave has shipped a million chips using UltraWide Band technology for indoor location sensing.

This reflects the increasing demand for accurate micro-location solutions from end users and customers within Internet of Things (IoT), consumer and industrial markets, and the company is aiming to reach five million units shipped in the course of next year.

Decawave's IR-UWB wireless technology can identify the specific location of any object or person within a guaranteed indoor location accuracy of 10 cm, and is being used for connected homes, phone accessories, drones and sports analytics; industrial with connected buildings, factory automation and healthcare, as well as automotive as Decawave technology will be embedded in cars in 2017.

The industrial market has been the first market to use the technology and several customer systems are already in the field. Decawave has also created an ecosystem of industrial partners that includes 15 companies who can deliver software, hardware or turn-key systems to end customers.

“The market for next generation indoor location technologies with improved accuracy is beginning to advance with solid use cases and adoption. UWB is clearly carving out its space, with ABI Research forecasting strong growth across a range of verticals,” said Patrick Connolly, Principal analyst at ABI Research. “The market opportunity is quite large and companies like Decawave that are leading the charge in UWB are well positioned to experience continued growth.”

The consumer products – some of which were presented at CES in January– are starting to ship now like the Pixie tags, which allow customers to accurately locate, protect and organize their valuables.
“Two years after launching the technology, Decawave continues to gain traction with 1,800 customers across 68 countries using Decawave’s IR-UWB and an extra 70 to 80 new customers each month,” said Ciaran Connell, CEO of Decawave. “This is phenomenal and shows our commitment as well as market interest and future demand. We’re thrilled that UWB is finally seeing market momentum. We know its potential and now our customers are experiencing it as well.”

It was featured in Jaguar’s connected car demo and enabled the Intel drone orchestra show during the keynote at CES.

www.decawave.com