The omlox team of PI (PROFIBUS & PROFINET International) and the FiRa® Consortium (FiRa) are announcing the creation of a joint working group to ensure co-existence and interoperability when ultra-wideband (UWB) technology is used in hybrid public-private spaces.
The world’s largest mobile smartphone manufacturers include UWB in their newer devices, to the projected tune of more than 1 billion mobile devices by 2032. There is a growing focus on leveraging UWB for consumer-oriented use cases, such as finding something or someone, and point-and-trigger control of devices within the home. Meanwhile, commercial enterprises, healthcare, and transit verticals have discovered the benefits of UWB for applications such as asset management, parts position tracking, worker safety, and more. Consumer and professional markets often have different requirements but rely on the same shared medium, UWB.
For real-time location solutions (RTLS) in the commercial environment, omlox developed the world’s first open standard. This ecosystem incorporates the omlox core zone which specifies the UWB protocol for the infrastructure and allows full interoperability between any infrastructure provider and professional mobile devices from different suppliers.
FiRa – denoting fine-ranging – is dedicated to transforming how people interact with their environment by enabling precise location awareness for people and devices. FiRa has developed standards for UWB targeting the PHY and MAC layers and, more importantly, FiRa offers a certification program to ensure interoperability across a wide range of UWB-enabled products, including smartphones.
Jerome Henry, FiRa Board Member, is excited about the collaboration with omlox saying “Smartphones are everywhere in the professional space. This joint working group offers a fantastic opportunity for both organizations to anticipate coexistence issues before they arise and support the seamless integration of each other's use cases within their respective environments.”
A primary long-term goal of the collaboration is to integrate functionalities developed by FiRa into the omlox core zone. Future applications stemming from this partnership include reliable and precise tracking of specialized assets such as high-value goods, hospital equipment, or transport carriers, while also enabling smartphone users to navigate indoor spaces and interact with these assets accurately.
Collaborations such as the one between omlox and FiRa help ensure that organizations achieve the maximum benefit when implementing solutions that include both the omlox and FiRa UWB standards.
About omlox
The PI technology omlox is the world’s first open standard for real-time locating solutions (RTLS) in a professional environment, which takes a holistic approach by integrating various locating technologies into a unified ecosystem (“omni location”). With it, the omlox architecture consists of the omlox core zone, which uses ultrawideband (UWB) technology, and further complementary zones involving further technologies like BLE, RFID, or GPS. The omlox hub connects all technologies, enabling seamless data exchange between different systems and applications. The interplay between the omlox core zone and the omlox hub, ensures high flexibility, continuous scalability, and real-time transparency, making omlox ideal for professional applications without any vendor lock-in.
The omlox standard, which meets strict industrial standards and provides market-ready products for immediate implementation is growing steadily and is already actively used by large (international) companies.
More about omlox see www.omlox.com.
About FiRa Consortium
The FiRa Consortium is a member-driven organization dedicated to transforming how we interact with our environment by enabling precise location awareness for people and devices using the secured fine-ranging and positioning capabilities of Ultra-Wideband (UWB) technology. FiRa does this by driving the development of technical specifications and certification, advocating for effective regulations, and defining a broad set of use cases for UWB.
To learn more about UWB and the FiRa Consortium, visit www.firaconsortium.org.