Samsung also unveiled ‘Exynos Connect’, a new brand that consolidates its short-range wireless communication solutions, such as UWB, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi that are essential in facilitating an increasingly hyper-connected world.

“Our Exynos Connect U100 combines sophisticated ranging and positioning capabilities with strong security to enable hyper-connectivity between people and everyday objects, fueling a range of new applications in positioning and location tracking,” said Joonsuk Kim, Executive Vice President of the Connectivity Development Team at Samsung Electronics. “Building on our technology leadership in communications technologies, we are committed to driving innovation in short-range communication solutions to transform the way we connect and relate to the world around us.”

UWB is a short-range wireless communication technology that operates over a broad frequency spectrum, allowing for fast data transfers at low power. With its ability to capture highly accurate spatial and directional data, UWB is growing in popularity across various industries including those that deal with remote payments, smart keys, smart homes and smart factories.

Leveraging time of arrival (ToA) and 3D angle of arrival (AoA) measurements, Samsung’s Exynos Connect U100 provides an accuracy of single-digit centimeters and under five degrees. This makes it especially useful when tracking location in challenging indoor environments where GPS is unavailable as well as for AR and VR applications that require exact and real-time tracking of moving people.

The U100 integrates radio frequency (RF), baseband, embedded Flash (eFlash) memory and power management IP into a single chip, making it ideal for use in compact devices.

Through its power-saving mode, the U100 can maximize the battery life of mobile and automotive solutions as well as IoT devices like smart tracking tags that run on batteries with limited power capacity. For reliable communication, the U100 is also equipped with a scrambled timestamp sequence (STS) function and a secure hardware encryption engine to prevent external hacking.

Samsung’s Exynos Connect U100 has been certified by the FiRa Consortium, an industry-led non-profit organization that certifies UWB products for conformity to interoperability standards.

The U100 also complies with the Car Connectivity Consortium (CCC) Digital Key Release 3.0, a standard designed to store, authenticate and exchange digital keys for vehicles, enabling U100-equipped smartphones to securely communicate digital key information with vehicles.

As people become increasingly more health-focused, tech industry realized the value in pursuing projects that help individuals monitor their health and fitness. Principal Engineer Jinwoo Song from Samsung Research’s Data Research Team explained how Samsung Health Stack project helps developers and engineers optimize app development and more.

Q1. What does Samsung Health Stack do and what benefits does it ultimately provide?

Samsung Health Stack is an open source project that provides help in conducting research related to digital health using wearable devices, developing applications needed and creating tools for backend server and analysis in Android and Wear OS environment. By utilizing Samsung Health Stack, IT developers and engineers can save time and cost needed for developing the right environment, and researchers can focus more on conducting research studies that utilize new digital data. I believe that such convenience for development will be a great foundation for various forms of digital health care research and new data-based technologies.

Q2. What was the focus of the open source when designing Samsung Health Stack?

We designed it by analyzing the user experience of everyone involved in healthcare research so that the solution can accommodate the entire process of recruiting participants, collecting data and analyzing data. When there were some difficulties during the course of the development, we found solutions through health care-related cooperation with many research institutions.

In addition, we made effort to provide the structure that can continue to be scaled up to handle new forms of data and devices that become the interest of digital health researchers. In particular, we’ve designed the structure so that only certain necessary parts can be selected and expanded for use in order to enable application in various cases that go beyond clinical research, such as the area of care, etc.

Q3. What do you think the direction of development will be going forward for data-based health-care technologies?

Due to the technological advancement including AI, and the transition to aging society, the digital technology that centers on consumers and data is becoming more important in the field of health care. In order to respond to such changes, it is important to have the capability to safely manage and precisely analyze various data on users.

We believe that a world in which everyone will be able to receive customized, optimal health care solutions with data on users’ everyday life will come in the future. We’ll continue to make effort to develop technologies and products to make this possible, and we look forward to seeing many developers participate in this effort.

In order to create the best product experience, Samsung’s One UI platform offers a simple and intuitive interface across all of its devices, putting the user at the center of its unified device experience. Content Strategist Josh Ross from Samsung’s Core UX Group of MX Business shared the inspiration behind One UI and how it was created with users in mind.

Q1. What is One UI and what experiences does it provide to users?

One UI is the unified platform for Samsung Galaxy products, from phones and tablets to watches and Galaxy Books. It creates a single, seamless experience that empowers users to get the most from their Samsung products.

Q2. To create an intuitive and easy-to-use interface for users, One UI adheres to four key principles: simplicity, effortlessness, consistency and authenticity. Can you explain why these principles are important for development of One UI and how you think this enhances the mobile experience for users?

You need principles so you can be sure your design is heading in the right direction. We’ve chosen these four principles because they put the focus on the user, which is what we always want to do. Simplicity helps users focus on what matters. Effortlessness means that you don’t have to struggle to get things done. Consistency means that things work the way you expect them to, which helps to make things effortless. And authenticity is about creating experiences that feel natural, like a part of your own self-expression. When these principles come together, the result can be very powerful but also subtle. You don’t always notice all the work that goes into the design, and that’s actually good. The best design is almost invisible.

Q3. Why are partnerships an essential part of One UI? What are the benefits of partnerships for One UI development?

Partnerships are a huge part of the One UI experience. As good as Samsung is, we need the insight and expertise of others to deliver the best experience to users. Partnerships make apps like SmartThings and Samsung Wallet possible, so that you can do amazing things like control your car or your lights, make payments, board an airplane and so much more, right from inside One UI. Partnerships enrich our Samsung Health content with fitness expertise about everything from sleep coaching to body composition to mindfulness. Partnerships add flavor to your chats with GIFs from Giphy and Tenor, stickers, fun camera features on Snapchat and much more. Partnerships like the Global Goals app, a collaboration between Samsung and the UN, help bring awareness to important causes.

We want to empower our users to do things the way they want, with the apps and services they love. Partnerships are a huge part of that.

Q4. Going forward, what are some things users can expect from Samsung’s One UI?

We have a lot of things we’re announcing at SDC this year, so I don’t want to give everything away, but you can always expect further refinement and improvement. We look at everything from icons and animations to how you organize and find things and so much more. We’re learning more and more from our users about how the foldable experience changes things, so keep looking for exciting developments in the area of unique features for the Galaxy Flip and Galaxy Fold.

Samsung has also partnered with HealthTap to provide telemedicine services through its Smart TVs. Samsung’s Tizen, an open-source operating system, helped developers optimize the service for use on Smart TVs. Sean Park, Senior Product Manager from the Experience Planning Group of Visual Display Business, explained more about accessing telemedicine through Samsung’s Smart TVs.

Q1. How did Tizen help with the development of this service?

Samsung Electronics’ smart operating system (OS) Tizen provided the grounds for easy navigation on the large screen display. Tizen is very quick to deploy as evidenced by what we were able to achieve in three months’ time.

Q2. What are the benefits of accessing telemedicine services through Samsung Smart TVs?

Everything nowadays has gone remote. We want to provide Samsung users with a more convenient way to access medical care, which is telemedicine.

Samsung’s collaboration with HealthTap allows you to see a doctor through a large screen from the comfort of your home, creating a more immersive telehealth experience. If you want to access services including mental health counseling, you can do that with Samsung Smart TVs. For those who are a bit older and whose vision makes it difficult to use a small mobile screen, or for those who need to hold small children while consulting a doctor, they can easily access telehealth services through Samsung Smart TVs. We want everyone to be able to easily see a doctor from home, which we believe is not only convenient but necessary.

Ultra-wideband technology (UWB) has been recently gaining more and more attention in the smart device industry. Principal Engineer Haeyoung Jun from Samsung Research’s Standards Research Team talked about the importance of standardization of UWB and how it could shape the future of the industry.

Q1. What is the role of the FiRa Consortium that Samsung Electronics established in 2019 with key industry players, and what specific activities does it do?

The FiRa Consortium develops the interoperability standard and certification program to enable consumers to use services powered by Ultra-wideband (UWB) technology in smart devices across devices made by different manufacturers.

After the FiRa Consortium was initially established by only a few companies, including Samsung Electronics, there are now more than 115 member companies participating in defining the interoperability standard together. Furthermore, FiRa is exploring various applications that utilize UWB, and is cooperating with multiple standard organizations across various industry verticals for the standardization of these applications.

Q2. We’d like to know why UWB technology is gaining attraction again recently and how it is moving forward.

As many service providers and manufacturers investigate use scenarios utilizing relative location information obtained by direct communication among devices without heavy infrastructures, the barrier to implementing UWB technology and applications have been lowered. Along with Samsung Electronics, global companies are also implementing UWB into their devices. As the number of UWB enabled products increases in the market, there will be motivation to install UWB infrastructures as well. We anticipate that, if just one or two game-changing UWB applications emerge in the market, the UWB ecosystem will expand rapidly.

Q3. We’d like to know what the new era of wireless communications envisioned through UWB technology standardization would look like in detail.

UWB technology allows your own devices to detect the location, including distance and direction, of other UWB devices in proximity. It also enables the secure data transactions among devices as well as secure internal interfaces, therefore UWB can provide different type of location-based services that GPS is unable to. For instances, UWB brings the same effect as tagging NFC to a reader even with the smartphone placed in a pocket or bag. With the standardized UWB technology, consumers will be able to access new convenient services across multiple verticals.

Now, a next-generation wireless communications technology called ultra-wideband (UWB) has emerged and promises to permeate users’ lives and change the way the world connects.

Samsung Newsroom sat down with the Standards Research Team from the Advanced Communications Research Center at Samsung Research – engineers who have provided communications technology leadership and set the standard for UWB – to learn about the progress they have made so far and what they believe the future holds for UWB technology.

UWB – Opening Up a New World of Connectivity

Struggling to pass through a subway turnstile while carrying something, arriving home to find you’ve forgotten your key, or having to wait for your computer to start up before you can complete an urgent task – what if these inconveniences could all be reconciled with a single solution? Well, that is precisely the convenience that UWB technology stands to bring to our lives with its ability to utilize distance information between devices.

More wireless services than we realize connect us to peripheral devices and facilities. Some services use near field communication (NFC) technology, which exchanges wireless data over a short distance, but in most cases a mobile phone or card must be taken out of your pocket and touched to an NFC reader directly.

UWB, a broadband communications technology, removes the inconvenience of having to make physical contact by using very short-wavelength signals to measure precise distances as well as transmit data. UWB enables distance measurement that is precise down to the centimeter and has a smaller margin of error than Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. In addition, this technology can limit the distance measurement function to pre-authorized devices, minimizing the risk of malicious hacking attempts.

Principal Engineer Haeyoung Jun of the Standards Research Team, Advanced Communications Research Center, Samsung Research

Speaking about the benefits of UWB technology, Haeyoung Jun of the Standards Research Team remarked that, “UWB’s precise distance measurement and locating capabilities will bring a new paradigm to a variety of industries, including smart homes, cities, mobility, retail and buildings.”

Global Standardization Expertise Brings New Life To Forgotten Technology

UWB technology was developed decades ago, but it is only recently that it has begun garnering real attention within the industry. Though UWB has faced limitations in terms of data transmission, services that harness the technology’s distance measurement capabilities have now proliferated, bringing UWB and the unique features it offers into the spotlight. In this climate, Samsung Electronics has refined UWB technology by taking a close look at factors such as consumer experiences and service convergence.

During this process, the biggest hurdle that Samsung faced was the establishment of the necessary infrastructure. UWB is a technology that focuses on the connectivity between devices, meaning that close collaboration with industry stakeholders is key to its inception. The company concluded that global standardization would be a must for an open UWB ecosystem, however it proved far from easy to focus the industries’ attention on the ‘forgotten technology’ that was UWB. Still Samsung endured, confident as it was in the great potential that UWB offered. The company embarked on a protracted journey to establish a global organization for UWB standardization, utilizing expertise it had established over more than 20 years of work in the global standardization sphere.

Kangjin Yoon (left), YeonJu Lim (second from left), Haeyoung Jun (middle), Sungkyu Cho (second from right) and Sooyeon Jung (right) of the Standards Research Team, Advanced Communications Research Center, Samsung Research

The journey to realize global UWB standardization began in 2018. Although many corporations initially had doubts over the technological feasibility of UWB, Samsung Electronics was steadfast in its efforts to persuade them. Jun recalls, “We initially spent time outlining our plans for numerous global companies, sharing Samsung’s vision for the development of UWB technology. Finally, in January of 2019, in a small conference room at the CES exhibition hall in Las Vegas, the relevant industry leaders in devices, chipsets and service areas gathered and agreed to establish a global coalition for UWB standardization. Thus, the “FiRa” (Fine-Ranging) Consortium was born.”

With its contingent of strong supporters, the UWB global standardization movement proceeded to go from strength to strength. The Consortium, which began as a collection of just three companies, has now grown to include more than 50 global corporations from across a range of industries that deal in areas such as chipsets, door locks, smartphones and software solutions. Jun relates that, “With new members joining the Consortium all the time, we’ll continue to deliver a robust ecosystem where UWB is applied in a broad context.”

What It Means To Work at the Forefront of Standardization

Presently, the industry has reached a consensus that UWB is the most optimal technology for measuring the distance between devices. This is the result of the efforts of the Standards Research Team and related teams in persistently making the case for UWB technology. After successfully rolling out UWB technology on its devices (the new Galaxy Note20 Ultra and Galaxy Z Fold2), Samsung Electronics has opened up a new era of wireless communication.

Staff Engineer Mingyu Lee of the Standards Research Team, Advanced Communications Research Center, Samsung Research

Now that standardization has been agreed upon by the necessary industrial players, those parties have a great responsibility to see that the process is seen through so that everyone may benefit. Mingyu Lee says, “We are working systematically and consulting experts to ensure fair competition and continued growth in the industry. As the process progresses, we are also gaining valuable experience by collaborating with colleagues from a broad range of disciplines.”

Jieun Keum (left), Gyubong Oh (second from left), Kook-heui Lee (middle), Mingyu Lee (second from right) and Sehee Han (right) of the Standards Research Team, Advanced Communications Research Center, Samsung Research

As they work towards pioneering a whole new market together, the Consortium members both cooperate and engage in spirited debate. Sehee Han explains, “I have actually had meetings with professionals who authored textbooks that I studied in university and debated with renowned open source code developers. As a result of these experiences I have realized that standardization is not about pursuing victory, but rather is a protracted journey towards reaching the consensuses that will allow us to create better technologies and products.”

Embarking Along the Untrodden Path and Showing the Way

In our everyday lives our queries are often met with open-ended answers, requiring us to strike out and find new ways forward. With this in mind, the Standards Research Team remains committed to blazing new trails into the unknown as they look to forge a pathway forward for UWB technology.

Principal Engineer Sehee Han of the Standards Research Team, Advanced Communications Research Center, Samsung Research

Jun says, “Having technological debates with top engineers from global corporations has been a great experience for the engineers of the Standards Research Team. Going forward, we will continue working to express our vision and develop solutions that are based on clear logic and grounded in the necessary values.”

As UWB technology takes its first steps, the team is staying focused on the positive changes the technology could deliver in the future. Han says, “We plan to broaden the scope of UWB standardization, implementing it first with digital key services and later with other services such as payment services, IoT device control solutions and location-based services.” He goes on to say, “Our work to broaden the UWB ecosystem will continue until devices and services that utilize UWB are much more portable and UWB technology becomes prominent.”

FiRa Consortium Ensures an Interoperable UWB Ecosystem Across Chipset, Device and Service Infrastructure
Through Standards and Certifications

Recognizing the need for emerging applications to build on a strong foundation that supports interoperability among all categories of devices, four sponsor members – The ASSA ABLOY Group which includes HID Global, and NXP Semiconductors, Samsung Electronics, and Bosch, leading companies in access, secure connectivity and mobile/CE device solutions –  today announced the launch of the FiRa Consortium. The new coalition is designed to grow the Ultra-Wideband (UWB) ecosystem so new use cases for fine ranging capabilities can thrive, ultimately setting a new standard in seamless user experiences. Sony Imaging Products & Solutions Inc., LitePoint and the Telecommunications Technology Association (TTA) are the first companies to join the newly-formed organization.

The FiRa name, which stands for “Fine Ranging,” highlights UWB technology’s unique ability to deliver unprecedented accuracy when measuring the distance or determining the relative position of a target. Especially in challenging environments, UWB technology outperforms other technologies in terms of accuracy, power consumption, robustness in RF connection, and security, by a wide margin.

“As an industry consortium, we believe UWB technology can transform the way people experience connectivity, and we’re committed to the widespread adoption of interoperable UWB technologies,” says Charlie Zhang, Chair of the FiRa Consortium and VP Engineering, Samsung Electronics.

The starting point for UWB technology is the IEEE standard 802.15.4/4z, which defines the essential characteristics for low-data-rate wireless connectivity and enhanced ranging. It is the aim of the FiRa Consortium to build on what the IEEE has already established, by developing an interoperability standard based on the IEEE’s profiled features, defining mechanisms that are out of scope of the IEEE standard, and pursuing activities that support rapid development of specific use cases.

The unique capabilities of UWB promise to make it an essential technology in many areas including:

• Seamless Access Control – UWB can identify an individual’s approach toward or away from a secured entrance, verify security credentials, and let the authorized individual pass through the entrance without physically presenting the credential.

• Location-Based Services – UWB offers highly precise positioning, even in congested multipath signal environments, making it easier to navigate large venues such as airports and shopping malls or find a car in a multi-story parking garage. It also enables targeted digital marketing campaigns and foot traffic data. Retailers can present customized offers, government agencies can tailor their notifications, and entertainment venues can personalize recommendations during events.

• Device-to-Device (Peer-to-Peer) Services – By providing precise relative distance and direction between two devices, UWB lets devices find the relative location of each other even without infrastructures such as anchors or access points. This allows people to easily find one another in crowded spaces or find items even when placed in hidden areas.

Due to its low power spectral density, UWB offers little to no interference with other wireless standards, so it is well suited for use with other wireless technologies, including Near Field Communication (NFC), Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi. There are also adjacent markets that leverage UWB in other ways, especially automotive. “The FiRa Consortium’s commitment to a complete ecosystem means we will work with other consortia and industry players to develop approaches and define parameters,” says Charles Dachs, Vice-Chair of the FiRa Consortium and GM & VP Secure Embedded Transactions, NXP Semiconductors.

FiRa Consortium members will have the chance to influence industry trends, gain early access to technical details, certify interoperable products, expand the UWB ecosystem, and share expertise. Ramesh Songukrishnasamy, Director and Treasurer of the FiRa Consortium, and SVP & CTO of HID Global says, “We encourage anyone, from any relevant industry area, who has a vested interest in the success of UWB to join us and contribute to the Consortium’s work.”

Additional FiRa Consortium Member Quotes 

• Kazuyuki Sakamoto, Senior General Manager, FeliCa Business Division, Sony Imaging Products & Solutions Inc. says, “We believe that UWB technology will bring the new benefit of connectivity to industries along with other wireless technologies.”

• “UWB opens up new and complementary wireless connectivity use-cases,” said Adam Smith, Director of Marketing at LitePoint. “We’re excited to help establish an ecosystem in which companies can utilize these new technologies by providing a fully-integrated UWB test solution, making it simple to validate the performance of UWB devices. At LitePoint, our mission is to help companies bring cutting-edge UWB products to market and that’s why we’re pleased to be part of the FiRa Consortium team.”

• Yongbum Park, Vice President, Telecommunications Technology Association says, “Device-to-device fine ranging technology without additional equipment is very useful for home or industrial applications. We believe that FiRa technology will change our lives.”

To learn more about the FiRa Consortium and the benefits of membership, visit www.firaconsortium.org.