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TechWaTch
Decawave UWB Chips Underpin Pixie’s Object Location
By Mickael Viot, Vice President of Marketing, Decawave
easy-to-lose items in order to keep track of them remotely. Launched by Pixie in 2015, their
P
small, friendly design has allowed them to quickly find a niche in the market. In order to create these de- vices, the company looked to Ire- land-based semiconductor manufac- turer Decawave to provide the tech- nology that drives the Points’ loca- tion function.
Digital Identity for Physical Things
The company’s first product,
Pixie Points are attached to everyday objects, given digital identities in the network, and tracked by a mobile app. Unlike other thing-tagging products, which give only a general indicator of how far away the things
ixie Points are Bluetooth tags that can be attached to key- chains, wallets and other other
are, Pixie’s app gives a precise loca- tion, distance and direction for every Pixie Point. The software ties togeth- er the information into the app and uses a “live arrow” display and aug- mented reality interface to show the relation of the user to the object. This interface shows the Points’ locations even when they are behind other ob- jects.
Pixie can track the locations of its tags
precisely, even through
walls, inside and outside, at a distance of up to 150 ft.
The Points are more than just a
set of tags that transmit simple sig- nals. They communicate with each other, using measurements of dis-
tances between each Pixie Point to create a complete map of where they all are in relation to each other. This map is then used to show the Points’ locations on the screen of a smart- phone. With ultra wideband (UWB)
technology created by De- cawave, Pixie can track the locations of its tags precisely, even through walls, inside and outside, at a distance of up to 150 ft (45m). So accu- rate, in fact, that they can display an object within 1 ft (30 cm) of its location. The company’s biggest
innovation is the precision and speed in which its loca- tion engine can locate the Pixie Points on a map and communicate that map to a smartphone. The locations are shown on the smart- phone screen using an aug- mented reality interface or with a precise distance and orientation. The tags use three wireless pro-
tions. These location measurements are 50 times more accurate than any location measurements based on Bluetooth. The trailblazing DW1000 is a
single-chip implementation of De- cawave’s UWB technology. It pro-
September, 2016
Pixie Points attach to everyday objects, are tracked by Bluetooth, and
displayed on a digital map in real-time by a smartphone.
tocols: a proprietary “Pixie Protocol” for a mesh communications network between points, UWB for measuring the distances between points, and Bluetooth for communication with smartphones. This combination leads to un-
matched range and accuracy with low power usage. Many hardware based real-time
location systems (RTLS) require that beacons, or locator devices, be in- stalled around a site. But the compa- ny’s goal was for Pixie Points to work with only the smartphone and the tags, with no locater devices needed. The company’s algorithms en-
able a map of tag locations to be built with no infrastructure, based on measurements between the tags themselves and the smartphone. This is something that no other thing-finding solution has enabled. Pixie’s innovation is to use the smartphone’s movement, as the user is walking around a site, to collect measurements that enable building a precise map.
Decawave’s UWB Technology Decawave’s UWB technology
provides the distance measurement technology that is the underpinning of Pixie’s location of things solution. Once the distances are precisely measured between pairs of tags, the Pixie location engine intelligently combines those measurements with the phone’s own measurements to produce an accurate map of loca-
vides distance measurement and lo- cation tracking with accuracy up to 4 in. (10 cm). The chips are also small and lightweight, very low-power, and otherwise perfect for chaotic applica- tions. Moreover, their location track- ing is very resilient when it comes to interference from the environment, including noise, radio waves and in- terference from moving objects. Decawave’s second commercial
product, the DWM1000, is a wireless module based on the DW1000 chip. This component provides all the per- formance and benefits of the chip in a form that is much easier to integrate into devices in development. Pixie needed a wireless layer
that could measure distances be- tween Pixie Points precisely. The company also needed the technology to be super low power, and to last over a year inside tags. Decawave’s chips gave them the best accuracy and lowest power use in the market, enabling them to develop a powerful location technique for calculating a map of tag locations. Pixie is an example of how a
consumer product can leapfrog over the competition based on highly ac- curate indoor location tracking. Part- nered with manufacturer Decawave, the company has enabled Pixie to re- alize its designs, adding a location- based, digital identity to everyday
things. Contact: Decawave, Adelaide
Chambers, Peter Street, Dublin 8, Ireland % +353 1 697 5030 E-mail:
info@decawave.com Web:
www.decawave.com r
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