Keys are an invention so ancient that we don’t even think of them as a technology. The earliest lock and key mechanisms date back to ancient Egyptian times, with the ancient Romans introducing metal keys like the mortise locks of today. Nevertheless, key technology has continued to evolve, and there has been an increasing trend towards digital key technologies over recent years.

Bluetooth Low Energy has established itself as one of the most successful communication technologies over the 15 years of its existence. Arguably it was the technology that launched the IOT revolution. However, whilst its success in the domain of low power data transfer is undisputed, attempts to use it as a locating technology have had a mixed record. The new Bluetooth Channel Sounding specification promises to deliver more precise locating technology than the existing Bluetooth beacon and Bluetooth Angle of Arrival technologies.

Wearable devices generate unique challenges for radio communications. Radio solutions are designed for the “default case” of the RF component sitting on a PCB, mounted in a plastic box, with an air gap around the PCB, and an optimised keep out zone and ground plane. This is logical for an all-purpose design, but not for the typical wearable case, where the RF component is near the body, a strong absorber of microwave radiation, and space is at a premium. This article examines the challenges of RF wearable design and how to overcome them. 

Home and professional lighting systems have traditionally been two different worlds. Homes were wired using simple cable and switching, whereas larger buildings might have more sophisticated electronic controls, using customer or open protocols such as DALI. In both cases, they tended to be based on wired systems, either with simple switched mains power routed to lights, or using controller units with separate power and control cabling.

The “Smart City” sounds like a science fiction vision of the future. In reality, we already live in Smart Cities, at least to a degree. We travel – whether by car, foot or public transport – with the aid of mapping software. We pay for tickets or parking with our phones. The numbers of people moving through a particular area may be discretely being counted, to understand the behaviours of crowds throughout the day. In this article we look at wireless technologies that are being deployed and why different approaches suit different use-cases.

(First Published in IOT Insider)

We all know what WiFi is for – fast wireless connections between computers/phones or other devices and the internet. And what we expect from a WiFi upgrade is more of the same – faster speed. This is what the progression from WiFi 3 to 4 to 5, has offered – speed upgrades around an order of magnitude.

For those of you with a long memory the genesis of the Smart Home was born in the late 80s or early 90s when the jargon word was “domotics”. At that time none of the current low power wireless standards had been invented. So progress with home automation was very slow and extremely fragmented in terms of the wired and wireless protocols used.

Bluetooth Low Energy is arguably the technology that “launched” the Internet of Things. The issue with “classic” Bluetooth was that it needed a continuous connection, which in turn meant it had rather limited battery life, and thus battery powered devices required frequent recharging. It also limited the use cases for which it could be easily deployed.

Combining UWB and BLE radios can create efficient secure entry systems. To understand why this is so, it is important to have knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of the two underlying radio technologies and how they fit together to create practical and secure entry systems.

The “Internet of Things” is something of a catch all term, but at heart it is all about providing connectivity between electronic devices and the internet. In a large fraction of cases that involves wireless connectivity, because frequently the connectivity is being added to existing devices, and adding a wireless connection is an order of magnitude simpler than adding a wired infrastructure.