2020 Apple's autumn conference was held at the Jobs Theater on September 11. At this conference, one detail is that the iPhones are all equipped with U1 chip that supports ultra-wideband (UWB) technology. According to official publicity, the new technology will significantly improve the Spatial Awareness capabilities of Apple mobile phones. So, what does spatial awareness mean? What exactly can the U1 chip do? What is UWB technology? All of these will lead to a new round of smart device application innovation? The answers to these questions will be revealed next. The Spatial Awareness is the ability to perceive orientation which is positioning ability. According to Apple's introduction, iPhone equipped with the U1 chip further enhances the positioning function of the mobile phone. It can not only sense the location of its own mobile phone, but also the location of other nearby mobile phones. Based on the space awareness capability provided by the U1 chip, when using AirDrop (AirDrop is the function of wireless file sharing provided by Apple devices), you only need to point your iPhone to someone else’s iPhone, and the system will prioritize it (the closer you are, the higher the priority), allowing you to share files faster. iPhone11 can achieve the application effect of "the closer you get to me, the first you get a response". Positioning is a familiar topic for all of us. We often use APPs such as Google Map or Baidu Map, which have positioning and navigation services. Location services help us indicate directions and increase our sense of security as well as control, which bring great convenience to our work and life. Therefore, what is the difference between UWB technology and the positioning technology we use now? The commonly used positioning technologies now mainly include satellite positioning and base station positioning. Satellite positioning is a technology that uses artificial earth satellites to perform point position measurement. And it is currently the most widely used and most popular positioning technology for users. The characteristics of high precision, fast speed and low cost of use are very prominent. The well-known satellite positioning systems include the United States’ Global Positioning System (GPS), China’s Beidou (BDS), Europe’s Galileo, Russia’s GLONASS. The principle of base station positioning is similar to radar. Radar positioning is to emit radar waves and perform spatial position measurement based on the reflection of the target. The base station works like a "radar". Usually, a mobile phone will be under the signal coverage of multiple base stations in a city. The mobile phone will "measure" the downlink pilot signals of different base stations to obtain the signal TOA (time of arrival) or TDOA (time difference of arrival) of each base station. According to the measurement result, the coordinates of the mobile phone can be calculated combined with the coordinates of the base station, Here is a picture to show it....

SASKATOON, Saskatchewan, Canada, Jul. 31, 2023 / For Immediate Release/ -- RF-star, a leader in wireless modules and IoT Radio Frequency solutions in China, announced today the relocation of its corporate headquarters to Podium Building No. A-12 in Nanshan district, Shenzhen, Guangdong to advance the operations and growth of the company. Figure1 RF-star's New Workplace in Shenzhen The celebration of move-in was held on Jul. 26, 2023. Texas Instruments, SEKORM, and many other partners brought flowers and presents to congratulate RF-star on its housewarming. Figure2 Flowers and Presents from RF-star Partners The corporate new office is in Room 502-503, Podium Building No. A-12, Shenzhen Bay Science and Technology Ecological Park, Nanshan District, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China. Expanding to 8,000 square feet at Shenzhen Bay Science and Technology Ecological Park in 2023, and 3,000 square feet at the Global Center in Chengdu in 2022, each location is a substantial upgrade from the Company's prior offices and will provide the necessary infrastructure for the corporate to continue to build on its current momentum and sales in Chinese and International markets. “We are greatly pleased for our partners to be here today to celebrate this housewarming with RF-star staff. Founded in 2010, in the past 13 years, RF-star has witnessed glorious moments and also encountered various uncontrollable factors during the epidemic. Although there are hardships in the progress, they don’t affect our sustainable development,” said Ben Qiu, GM of RF-star. “Thank you all for your support and our employees for their joint efforts, so that we can stand on this today and create a more brilliant moment together.” At last, he wished RF-star business to flourish like Bamboo to start its new journey and create a new future! Figure3 RF-star Leaders Snapshot King Kang, CEO of RF-star, says: “It is my regret that I could not witness the relocation of RF-star headquarters with you, but I can still enjoy the housewarming celebration online in Canada. Many thanks to all partners, customers and staff, the consistent development and growth of RF-star are absolutely inseparable from you.” Kang states: “In just a few years, our subsidiaries and branches in Canada, Chengdu, and Suzhou were established successively, and we will witness more new branches of RF-star in the future. As a pioneer in the wireless Internet of Things (IoT) area, RF-star with the vision of “Wireless Creates Infinite Possibilities”, has engaged itself in empowering different industries. We are willing to set up a better team to support our development and be cooperating with you to create a more intelligent society.” About RF-star Shenzhen RF-star Technology Co., Ltd. (RF-star) is a leading supplier of wireless RF solutions and low-power modules with an excellent industry reputation and credibility. As the official third-party IDH of Texas Instruments for more than a decade and a trusted partner for customers worldwide,...

Why are there more and more Tire Pressure Monitoring Systems (TPMS) embedding BLE technology? Make the automobile more intelligent Much safer with the real-time monitoring One of the aftermarket installed products, high integration and easy to deploy

At present, there are more and more options for wireless SoC chips, from the European and American manufacturers to the domestic semiconductors. How to choose a suitable wireless chip for product development? The following aspects need to be considered. Wireless Technology: The current popular low-power wireless technologies are including Wi-Fi, small wireless, LoRa, Bluetooth, Thread, ZigBee, NFC, Private 2.4G, NB-IoT, 2G, 3G, 4G, etc., The wireless technologies commonly used in factory automation and smart home including Wi-Fi, small wireless, BLE, Thread, ZigBee, NFC. The following figure compares the advantages and disadvantages of these different wireless protocols in data transmission bandwidth, distance and power consumption. An appropriate solution should be selected according to the usage scenario. Wi-Fi: Wi-Fi is suitable for high-speed video data transmission, but its power consumption is relatively high. At present, there are fewer mainstream low-power Wi-Fi chips on the market. The core uses ARM M3 or M4 core, which runs simple RTOS, and only supports 802.11b/g/n mode, low bandwidth, but can meet the application of dry battery power supply. ZigBee: The best choice of smart home, the status is being challenged by BLE MESH. But after the launch of ZigBee 3.0, various systems can be interconnected, and the compatibility of the platform is much better than before. Sub-1G: Because of its stability and long transmission distance, it can be used in various industrial control fields. The TX peak current is large, but the system is in sleep mode at other times. Thus, the overall power consumption is low. NFC: The function is which mobile phones must be carried with. Public transportation systems and access control systems are mostly adopted by RFID and NFC solutions. LoRa: Unique spread spectrum technology, +20 dBm transmit power, low power consumption, long-distance, the disadvantage is low bandwidth utilization and low data throughput. Power Consumption Always keep the end users’ experience in mind. If the battery fails, even the most ideal product will be abandoned. What kind of power supply method can be used? Coin cell, dry battery, lithium battery? Coin cells are popular due to their low cost, small size and lightweight. Considering that the battery life of these products is crucial, and the coin cell can only provide a peak current of about 5 mA without being damaged. If you drive a larger current peak, the battery capacity will be affected. RF transmit power: The transmit power of Bluetooth is restively low. Usually, only 5 dBm transmit power is supported, generally refer to 0 dBm transmit power according to specifications. ZigBee, small wireless transmission power can reach 20 dBm. (More than 20 dBm cannot pass the safety test). MCU operating power consumption: Because the same ARM core of the wireless SoC is used, the power consumption is similar to each other. But it is necessary to evaluate the MCU running time from wakes up statu...

The three kinds of bikesharing programs: Conventional bikesharing Dockless bikesharing Dockless bikesharing with electronic-docking stations To address the negative impacts associated with dockless bikesharing, local governments have started to require riders to return bikes to designated locations, or electronic-docking stations on the curb, while simultaneously limiting the number of dockless shared bikes throughout the city. They are referred to as geo-fenced areas, in that they use satellite positioning technology or Bluetooth technology to determine whether bikes are returned inside the designated areas and penalize riders when violations occur. Most of these electronic-docking stations are virtual docking stations which are based on Beidou navigation satellite technology(a satellite positioning technology similar to GPS) and Bluetooth technology. Dockless shared bikes can be parked in these electronic-docking stations. Promoting electronic-docking stations is also beneficial for operators to dispatch and maintain shared bikes. Top benefits of Bluetooth electronic fence Through installing several BLE signal launchers on the ground to draw a boundary fence region, the signal receiver (electronic BLE tag attached to the bike) receives the RSSI (Received Signal Strength Indication) signal which the launcher sends out, and then analyzes these RSSIs using SVM (support vector machine). Finally the SVM can judge these signals to know the bike belongs to in the fence or outside the fence. As the electronic fence system based on Bluetooth modules with higher accuracy and stability are implemented in major shared bicycles, such as Meituan, Harrow, cyan and Didi. As a well-known Bluetooth module manufacturer in China, Shenzhen RF-star Technology Co., Ltd., has provided empowerment for the smart parking solutions of many domestic and foreign manufacturers with its advanced Beacon positioning technology, helping to relieve the pressure of urban parking and assisting the construction of smart cities. Beacon products such as AR1, AR4, and Bluetooth modules with Beacon function RF-BM-4044B4, RF-BM-BG22A1, RF-BM-BG22A3 are all worthy of attention.

Recently, RF-star, a veteran wireless IoT company in China, announced that it has joined hands with Texas Instruments to launch several Wi-SUN products, focusing on the development of wide-area mesh, hoping to provide customers with integrated solution development environment of end-edge-cloud in the field of industrial IoT and public facilities. The products disclosed by the company include a variety of Wi-SUN communication modules based on the TI CC1352 and CC1312 series, which support Sub1G multi-band and 2.4GHz communication, and support self-organizing networks by mesh and multi-hop. The distance of a single hop can reach several kilometers. Development history of Wi-SUN Even for most people in the IoT circle, Wi-SUN is a new technology. Actually it has been created for more than a dozen years. However it floated only in recent years after more major chip vendors and device manufacturers joined the technology alliance and started to promote the technology. As early as 2008, there was no unified wireless communication standard for the Wide Area network in the industry, while there were various wireless communication protocols in the industry at that time. What these protocols have in common is that they adopted the IEEE 802.15.4 standard. But they still cannot achieve interconnection in the application layer. In order to solve this complex problem, Wi-SUN FAN (Wireless Utility Field Area Network), a large-scale wireless mesh network based on IP technology came into being. The standard is committed to becoming the global wireless mesh network standard with interoperability. With the implementation of the standard, Wi-SUN alliance was established in 2012. Currently, the alliance has more than 250 members worldwide, including Cisco, ARM, Texas Instruments and Itron, etc. Over the past two years, the Wi-SUN standard has matured, and hundreds of millions of Wi-SUN enabled devices have been deployed worldwide. It is widely used in public utilities and smart city facilities due to its feature of enabling smart meters, smart street lights and other devices to be connected to a public network. Wi-SUN technology is an open specification based on IEEE 802.15.4g, IEEE 802 and IETF IPv6 standard protocols. Wi-SUN FAN is a mesh network protocol that support self organizing and self-healing functions. Each device in the network can communicate with its neighbors, and signals can be transmit to each node in the mesh, making very long range hops in between. Wi-SUN features long distance transmission, security, high scalability, interoperability, easy deployment, mesh network, as well as low power consumption (the battery life of Wi-SUN modules has a chance to It can be used for ten years). It is widely used in smart meters and family intelligent energy management (HEMS) controllers for communication, and is also conducive to building a wide-area large-scale internet of things. The Wi-SUN standard mainly consists of two sub-specifications, namely FAN and HAN. ...

The traditional way of personnel clock-in is to use fingerprints. By registering personal fingerprints in advance, press the fingerprints on the fingerprint attendance machine to confirm the punch-in of personnel on duty. However, the fingerprint attendance machine has the problems of low efficiency, high cleanliness requirement of fingerprints, and the possibility of punch-in failure. Especially at the special moment when the novel coronavirus is raging, people should try to minimize contact between people, and extra attention should be paid to disinfection and avoiding cross-infection of items that are in public touch. For office workers, they need to touch the fingerprint attendance machine during on and off duty. It is difficult to avoid the potential risk of cross-infection. After all, at workplaces, the one who comes into contact with the most people every day, except for door handles, is the fingerprint attendance machine. So, how to realize the attendance of employees in this special period? In the face of complex personnel contact, the best way to avoid cross-infection is contactless clock-in. At this time, Beacon attendance punch-in has become a good alternative. RF-star launched the smart Beacon work attendance solution, using a contactless attendance system to help employees complete punch-in through mobile phones and assist companies to avoid the risk of cross-infection. As long as the mobile phone turns on Bluetooth and the personnel pass by the work attendance device, the personnel identification and his attendance can be realized. Help company managers get rid of various inefficient attendance management methods such as fingerprint attendance, USB flash disk copying attendance data and signature attendance confirmation. The Bluetooth Attendance solution is based on Beacon technology. Broadcast Beacon signals regularly through the Beacon product RF-B-AR1, RF-B-AR4. The punch-in location binding information is carried in MAC address, UUID, Major, Minor and others in the broadcast packets. The personnel uses a mobile phone with Bluetooth enabled to search for the Beacon signal in the air to confirm the punch-in attendance and location. In the Beacon work attendance system, walk into the office area, directly take out the mobile phone, open the APP and punch in finished. No need to punch in on the attendance machine with fingerprints. The Beacon work attendance solution is flexible and convenient, but it also faces the risk of being cheated to punch in. Here come questions. Can Beacon punch-in solve the problem of entrusted attendance? How to confirm that the employee has arrived at the office? Can Beacon punch-in solve the problem of entrusted attendance? There are many APPs and tools for cheating on attendance on the Internet. Roughly the following methods: 1. Location simulation, cracked by GPS and baseband module 2. Wi-Fi simulation 3. Root or jailbreak the phone 4. Customize the mobile phone, crack from the hardware In addition t...

Looking for a way to measure your oil/water levels without ever opening a storage tank? Our Bluetooth technology enables the level gauge to do this. By building a Bluetooth module into the liquid level gauge, the liquid level gauge can transmit data such as its power level, sensing signal strength, liquid level data information, and alarm information to the terminal device in real-time through the wireless network. Thus you can check your liquid level on your phone at any time and anywhere.

Time zipped by and the bell for the year 2022 is about to ring. At this beautiful moment of bidding farewell to the old and ushering in the new, RF-star held the Annual Banquet for 2021 at Chengdu where all staff gathered together to celebrate the achievements made in 2021 and expect a bright outlook for 2022. In the past year of 2021, RF-star has made numerous achievements and continues to develop in the IoT industry, which enables itself to be more professional and creative in wireless technology. Before the activities, each department leader made a report on their work for 2021. Then the chairman of the board, Mr.Kang Kai, made an achievement and progress summary of RF-star. He also talked about the company's annual sales achievements, which far exceeded initial expectations and mentioned the outlook for 2022, including several plans such as doubling overall sales in 2021 and expanding and relocating the Chengdu branch. Every success and progress of RF-star will not be possible without the support and help from everyone! After the Chairman’s speech, it comes to the award ceremony. The company awarded more than 20 awards to some outstanding staff, including the most excellent staff in 2021, sales champion award, the most outstanding team award and so on. Many young employees stepped onto the award-winning stage. They show the charming demeanor of RF-star young employees! After the award ceremony, all the staff moved to the hotel and share the banquet. During the banquet, the company held raffle draw activity and fun games, which brings endless rousing cheers and claps, also pushes the activity to its climax. The year 2022 is a new start for RF-star! With the enhancement of overall arrangements of the company, 2022 will be a more rapid development period. “Inclusive all-win and shape the future”. We have confident belief and wonderful wishes to keep close cooperation with all our customers to shape a better future!