Recently, during the Munich Electronics Fair held in Shanghai, Qorvo showcased a series of latest products and technologies, especially new offerings for the automotive industry and smart home sector. In the AI era, innovative screen interactions, closely-knit positioning among objects, and higher performance offer us more room for imagination.
During the Munich Electronics Fair, Qorvo’s management also accepted media interviews, deeply exploring topics such as vehicular UWB, Wi-Fi 7, Matter protocol, and more.
Automotive Industry Related Products
At this exhibition, Qorvo showed its latest advancements in automotive electronics. With the automotive industry progressing towards electrification, intelligence, and connectivity, RF technology is becoming increasingly important in vehicular communication, navigation, radar, and other fields. UWB is one of the significant technological directions.
In 2020, Apple integrated the UWB chip in its iPhone, enabling more accurate positioning from smart homes to smart cars. The third-generation UWB chip DW3000Q presented by Qorvo can be used in vehicles. It can be widely applied for precise positioning, keyless entry, and in-vehicle occupant detection.
Jiang Xiong, the Senior Sales Director of Qorvo, mentioned that many European car companies are adopting UWB technology, and Chinese car companies are also following suit, with an increasing number of brands joining in.
However, it is discernible that Chinese users have a low demand for UWB. This is because, under the conditions of European car usage, people are more worried about car theft, thus the better security and precise positioning capability of UWB naturally become desirable. However, the circumstances for car usage in China are different—people are not afraid of car theft, so naturally the demand for UWB isn’t high.
In the intelligent home sector, DW3000Q can also be used for smartphones or IoT devices, such as the UWB Tag, UWB mobile phones, and other devices. As revealed by an on-site staff member, currently, several domestic mobile phone manufacturers are evaluating and verifying Qorvo’s UWB products.
Smart Devices Make Connections Tighter
Apart from the automotive electronic products, Qorvo also exhibited its latest technology in the intelligent home sector, particularly products related to Matter and Wi-Fi 7. The launch of these technologies will greatly enhance the interoperability and communication speed of intelligent home devices, offering a more convenient and efficient user experience.
As a burgeoning stand for intelligent home interconnection, Matter solves the compatibility problem among different brand devices. Qorvo’s newly-released Matter Bridge module connects the Zigbee protocol’s intelligent home to the Matter ecosystem, enabling seamless connections between different brand intelligent home devices.In the live demo, users can easily control all smart devices through a single app, Apple Home, greatly improving the convenience of smart homes.
But, why create a bridge device to allow Zigbee to support Matter, instead of directly developing a smart home product that supports Matter?
There are two reasons. First, Zigbee is a mature solution with many companies in the industry and a large number of existing products. The need for some new devices to be compatible with both Matter and Zigbee protocols will gradually increase with the implementation of Matter, necessitating either conversion or multi-protocol support.
The second reason is cost. If a device that uses the Zigbee protocol is integrated into the Matter ecosystem, it may require two chips, one for Zigbee and another for Matter. This increases the cost and can also cause interference between the two identical frequency chips. However, Qorvo’s concurrent connect technology can support both protocols with a single chip, solving the problems of cost and simultaneous frequency interference.
At the exhibition, Qorvo also showcased the latest Wi-Fi 7 chipset and mass-produced XiaoMi routers. As the next-generation wireless communication standard, Wi-Fi 7 offers higher transmission speeds and lower latency, fulfilling the requirements of future smart homes and IoT devices for high-speed data transmission.
Qorvo’s Senior Market Manager, Lin Jianfu, said on site, “Wi-Fi 7 is expected to explode in China by 2024.”
He also mentioned that Qorvo has been working in the Wi-Fi field for a long time, and its solutions are present in many higher-end Wi-Fi 7 products. Currently, Qorvo is progressively developing the second generation of Wi-Fi 7 products. In the future, these second-generation products will have smaller packaging, better power consumption and efficiency rates, and lower prices.
This article is a translation by AI of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.