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.

Samsung Electronics reported on the 29th of July that, adding to his inductions into the Hall of Fame of the HPCA (IEEE International Symposium on High-Performance Computer Architecture) in 2015 and the MICRO (IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Microarchitecture) in 2016, Dr. Kim has recently been named to the Hall of Fame of the ISCA (ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Computer Architecture). The ISCA, HPCA and MICRO are the three most prestigious international computer architecture conferences, and have their own Hall of Fame which list researchers with eight or more papers with technological excellence and influence.

Nam Sung Kim, Senior Vice President of the Memory Business, Device Solutions Division, Samsung Electronics

Samsung Research’s R&D Institute Poland Team

Samsung Research’s R&D Institute China-Beijing Team

For Task 1 – Subtask B, testing acoustic scene classification with mismatched recording devices, Samsung Research’s R&D Institute Poland won the first place. For Task 1 – Subtask C which tests open set acoustic scene classification, Samsung Research’s R&D Institute China-Beijing, in partnership with Beijing University of Post and Telecommunication (BUPT), won the first place while Samsung Research Institute Poland received the second place.

The goal of Subtask B and C of Task 1 (Acoustic Scene Classification) was to classify a test recording into one of the provided predefined classes that characterizes the environment in which it was recorded. In addition to this, Subtask C also asked participants to detect undefined acoustic scene from the 10 target classes. The recordings were taken in 12 large European cities and represented 10 categories: airport, indoor shopping mall, metro station, pedestrian street, public square, street with medium level of traffic, traveling by tram, traveling by bus, traveling by underground metro, and urban park.

In addition, Samsung Research’s R&D Institute Poland was recognized as the best team in Task 3 measuring sound event localization and detection. The goal of Task 3 was to jointly localize and recognize individual sound events and their durations. This technology has a wide variety of applications, including robots and AI speakers.

Sounds carry a large amount of information about our everyday environment and physical events that take place around us.¹ We’re now able to perceive the sound scene we’re in -such as a busy street, and even identify individual sounds such as a baby crying. This technology could help design intelligent monitoring systems that recognize activities in their environment by acoustic information.

The objective of Audio Intelligence at Samsung Research, the advanced research & development hub of the company’s SET (End-products) Business, is to improve the technology so that it can better pick out individual sounds even in environments with other background noise distractions.

¹ http://dcase.community/challenge2019/

Samsung Electronics announced today that Master Juho Lee of Samsung Research, the advanced research & development hub of the company’s SET (End-products) Business, was named a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the world’s largest association of technical professionals.

The IEEE Grade of Fellow is conferred by the IEEE Board of Directors upon a person with an outstanding record of accomplishments in any of the IEEE fields of interest. The total number selected in any one year cannot exceed 0.1 percent of the total voting membership. Among the membership, IEEE Fellow is the highest grade and is recognized by the technical community as a prestigious honor and an important career achievement.

Master Lee is a representative expert of Samsung in the research and standardization of mobile communication technologies. He has made tremendous contributions on 3G, 4G, and 5G over the last 18 years, including incorporation of essential technologies into standards. From February 2003 to August 2008, he was a Vice Chairman of RAN1 working group of 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), a global telecommunications standards organization, and led the standardization of 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) technologies.

During a keynote speech at the 2018 IEEE* International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM), Dr. ES Jung, president and head of Foundry Business at Samsung Electronics, shared his vision that the next industrial revolution can only happen by the continuous evolution of semiconductor technology.

In his presentation “Fourth Industrial Revolution and Foundry: Challenges and Opportunities”, Dr. Jung explained that the evolution of advanced foundry technologies will be crucial to enable the design and manufacture of innovative semiconductor products that will take our everyday life into new and previously unthought-of directions.

New and exciting applications such as AI, cloud computing, autonomous vehicles, and smart home require high-level technologies including sophisticated design and system level optimization.

Dr. Jung discussed the increased complexities of semiconductor technology that has altered the role of the semiconductor foundry from a conventional wafer manufacturing business to a total solution provider. Today, foundries are providing value-added services, especially in the areas of design service and infrastructure, product engineering, and packaging/testing.

Semiconductors have evolved to be faster in speed, higher in density, and lower in power consumption, allowing a wide range of new and innovative applications. In addition, to analyze exponentially growing, unprecedented amounts of data, new memory architectures and completely new schemes of computation, such as neuromorphic computing, have to be developed.

“None of these technological advancements would have been possible without collaboration across the entire semiconductor industry” emphasized Dr. Jung. “This collaboration is paramount between material, equipment, electronic devices, government, universities, research centers, and consortiums, to ensure the success in the upcoming 4^th industrial revolution.”

New Technological Milestones

Dr. Jung also introduced some of recent research and development in future silicon technology, including MRAM, a non-volatile memory solution embedded in conventional logic process, and 3nm Gate-All-Around (GAA) technology.

MRAM is one of the examples of new semiconductor devices that consume much less power. As memory density becomes higher, MRAM’s power efficiency becomes more prominent, consuming only 0.5% of power compared to SRAM at 1,024Mb. MRAM also has smaller cell area, which allows design flexibility.

Samsung’s unique GAA technology called Multi-Bridge-Channel FET(MBCFET) uses vertically stacked multiple nanosheet channels. With variable width of nanosheet, this technology provides not only optimal performance and power characteristics, but also high design flexibility. Furthermore, MBCFET is fabricated using 90% or more of FinFET process with only a few revised masks, allowing easy migration.

Also with one of its newly published papers at 2018 IEDM, Samsung Electronics shared the development progress of 3nm, a successful demonstration of fully functioning high-density SRAM circuit. The development of Samsung’s first process node applying MBCFET technology is on schedule.

For more information, please visit https://www.samsungfoundry.com

* IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) is one of the world’s largest associations of technical professionals dedicated to advancing technologies, including electronic engineering, telecommunications, and computer engineering. Link