Samsung’s UWB-Based Augmented Reality

August 07, 2020

The new flagship Galaxy Note 20 Ultra launched by Samsung is its first handheld mobile device that uses Ultra WideBand (UWB) technology [1]. This technology was first introduced to the world by Apple with the offering being made publicly available in its iPhone 11.

The New Tech

The new technology is going to power Google’s new feature for Nearby Share, allowing for detections of the similar devices in your immediate vicinity, helping in faster sharing and better connectivity in a smaller area.

Making the Augmented World Real

The main focus around the technology, however, is to ultimately be able to support the Augmented Reality[2] features or even allow the mobile device to act as a digital key[3] for a connected smart house, where it will be able to sense when you are approaching the door and can just autonomously unlock the same.

UWB-based AR, used to locate UWB capable devices.

Major supporting factors for AR:

UWB based chip gives the wireless file transfer system a boost.
It gives the device “spatial awareness” capabilities[4]
It can even help you figure out whose mobile device you are pointing at.
It has the ability to tell the location of a device up to a few centimeter accuracy.[5]

How the New Tech Work

While UWB beacons and anchors have been used around the world for exhibits etc, the use of technology in the mobile devices is relatively new. The major reason around the same was that the UWB chip had a price disadvantage as the prices of Bluetooth and WIFI chips fell sharply owing to the interest of the Phone companies in their use gave production at scale a boost, now with the introduction of these chips in relatively more phones will bring the prices lower and therefore accelerating the cycle by giving access to the tech for even lower-end devices.

One way to think around the functionalities of the tech is to think of it as a RADAR[6], as it can continuously scan a room in its entirety and precisely lock on to an object, which can be a fellow UWB device or a light beam to discover its relative position or communicate.

The RADAR likeability gives it a huge edge for utilization in Augmented Reality.
It can help create a 3D map or help validate a 3D map generated by an Artificial Intelligence system that utilizes the Cameras.
It can be directly integrated as feedback or input in an AI generating Augmented reality in real-time to create a great user experience.

Why use UWB in Samsung Note 20

UWB has major advantages over using AI only driven systems to create a 3D surroundings, few of the largest ones being

UWB in Samsung Note 20 uses an extremely low power[7]
It is capable of transmitting billions of pulses to better give an edge to create real-time feedback for active Rendering augmenting any computer vision algorithm.
Pulse rate can be as high as one pulse every 2 nanoseconds[8]
Although it is low powered it has the capability to transmit high Bandwidth (500MHz) for relaying data from any host devices to any other devices present in its vicinity of 30 feet.
Due to the high bandwidth, the data capacity is really high

Is it all good, with no cons?

Like most of the things in the world, we can always see some disadvantages associated with this technology as well, there are reasons why it will not replace the existing architectures for data transmission at a granular level. One of the biggest ones being that it is not able to send data through walls, unlike a normal Wifi. Nonetheless, the major application will remain to be in the field of easy close-range data transfer and Augmented reality where it will be a very important feature for the near times to come.