Ultra wideband is a safer and more precise technology than Bluetooth, and above all it is integrated into more and more phones, starting with iPhone.
It is therefore not surprising that Apple is trying to increase the diffusion of digital keysa technology that allows you to open a vehicle and even simply start it with your phone.
The news comes directly from Car Connectivity Consortium (CCC), which announced a partnership with the FiRa Consortiumwhich oversees the development of the Ultra-wideband (UWB) standard.
The association’s goal will be to develop a standard for UWB used in Digital Keys of the CCC, a specification adopted by Apple for its function Car Keys which allows your iPhone and Apple Watch to unlock i vehicles compatible (including BMW, Kia, Hyundai, Mercedes and Genesis) via NFC.
Just to give an idea of the underlying interests, the CCC includes Apple, Samsung, Xiaomi and most major automotive companies as members, while the FiRa, a non-profit organization that supports UWB, includes Apple, Google, Cisco, Samsung, Qualcomm and others as members.
The new body, called Joint Ultra-wideband (UWB) MAC PHY Working Group (JUMPWG), will ensure “the interoperability and long-term scalability of the advanced UWB technology developed for the CCC digital key, encouraging wider adoption of UWB technology for secure and accurate ranging for vehicle access“.
Leading it will be Jinjing Jiang, a wireless systems engineer at Apple, whose task will be to bring together all the manufacturers of telephones and of car to create a standard that does not have flaws that could be exploited by anyone hackers.
But why the need to create a standard? At the moment the digital key of the CCC uses UWB And NFC, along with Bluetooth Low Energy to send and receive communications between your phone and car. Some car companies use this technology to allow people to to unlock And to boot their cars without even taking their phones out of their pockets.
The problem is that manufacturers like BMW have their own digital keys that work away NFC, while Samsung announced two years ago that it would use the UWB on your digital keys for BMW, Audi and Ford vehicles.
The partnership is expected to encourage wider adoption of the use of the technology UWB in vehicles, which would not only be safer but also simpler, since to use NFC it is necessary to bring the phone closer to the door, while with UWB the phone could also fit in your pocket.
