German electronics company Infineon has unveiled an ultra-wideband (UWB) product family for precise positioning and smart presence detection.

The Airoc UWB TSL100 has an architecture aimed at reducing power consumption and enhancing security. The product family marks the start of a scalable UWB platform intended to support future standards such as IEEE 802.15.4ab and is compliant with industry consortium standards such as CCC, Aliro and FiRa.

The TSL100 combines ranging and sensing capabilities in a single device, enabling applications such as secured vehicle access, in-cabin presence detection, access control, contactless payment, ticketing and indoor navigation, as well as industrial use cases including asset tracking and collision avoidance. This is seen as the start of a new family of UWB device combining precise positioning and smart presence detection on a single chip, addressing growing demand across automotive, consumer and industrial markets.

Vehicle and building access systems as well as asset tracking and indoor navigation require very low power operation, and reliable and robust RF performance to resolve non-line of sight scenarios such as back pocket situations. Moreover, users and administrators demand high security levels to avoid man-in-the-middle attacks.

“Our Airoc UWB portfolio addresses these challenges by combining low power consumption, excellent first-path dynamic range and provable physical- and application-layer security,” said Maurizio Skerlj, senior vice president at Infineon. “As a result, the first-generation Airoc UWB TSL100 SoC enables seamless access, positioning and sensing capabilities while reducing system complexity.”

The product family comes in two variants: the TSL111A (AEC-Q100) for automotive OEMs and tier-one suppliers, and the TSL111C for consumer and industrial applications. The automotive variant targets use cases such as CCC Digital Key, key fobs, NCap-compliant presence detection, kick sensing, and intrusion detection, while the consumer and industrial variant supports smart access, asset tracking, tap-free payment, find applications and indoor navigation. The integration of ranging and sensing on a single device reduces system complexity by eliminating the need for separate sensing subsystems in many applications.

A low-power design achieves coin-cell battery lifetime of more than two years in CCC ranging schemes for key fobs. A dedicated low-power mode further reduces current consumption by more than 50 per cent.

The phy design enables high FiRa and CCC security levels (48bit) in difficult non-line-of-sight conditions, such as back-pocket scenarios. The system can detect and verify the security status of weak direct paths up to 100,000 times weaker than reflected paths.

The RF architecture supports sensing functions for applications such as presence detection, supporting NCap scenarios as well as kick sensing and intrusion detection.

Airoc intent detection technology provides a system-level offering for configurable unlock zones as well as inside and outside detection for reliable access control performance while extending battery life for Aliro-enabled smart locks.

The device will be supported by an engineering sample kit that provides developers with access to Infineon’s latest UWB technology for rapid prototyping of secured access and sensing applications. The kit supports system-level evaluation, including ranging accuracy, sensing coverage and power consumption, and helps accelerate hardware and software co-development, reducing time-to-market for UWB-enabled products.

Engineering sample kits for the are available upon request. More information is available at www.infineon.com/airoc-uwb.