SPARK Microsystems Promises Big Energy Efficiency Gains with Its New LE-UWB Presence Detection Kit

Canadian fabless semiconductor firm SPARK Microsystems has announced a development kit built around its Low-Energy Ultra Wideband (LE-UWB) technology, which it claims can offer presence detection capabilities at a twentyfold power efficiency gain over its rivals.

"The demand for presence detection solutions for people, assets, and equipment is growing rapidly. Deployment costs and maintenance related to battery replacement, along with interference resilience and solution flexibility, have become key differentiators in an increasingly competitive market," says SPARK Microsystems' Alberto Prud’homme. "A new approach is needed to achieve low power, robust and interference-resilient presence detection, leveraging development efficiencies that eliminate guesswork and speed design cycles. SPARK's new PDK [Presence Detection Kit] is the perfect starting point to accelerate the creation of next-generation, context-aware connected devices."

The new development kit, which is, as the name suggests, built around presence detection workloads, uses the company's patented LE-UWB technology — an ultra-low-energy alternative to traditional ultra-wideband, which the company says offers 20 times better power efficiency. For those who have already investigated Bluetooth and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons for presence detection, SPARK claims a lesser but still-impressive tenfold efficiency gain — working out to a 30µW power draw at a 4Hz sample rate, the company says.

Despite the low power draw, the company's approach doesn't skimp on features: SPARK says its PDK supports uni- and bidirectional communication, ultra-low-power beacon detection with customizable detection zones, and line-of-sight time-of-flight (ToF) proximity and distance calculations.

More information is available on the SPARK Microsystems website; the company has not disclosed pricing, but says the kits are now available to order through its sales department.