Thales, Cisco Systems, Redpoint Positioning Corporation and STMicroelectronics Among Industry Leaders Joining the FiRa Consortium

Recently Adding 21 New Members, the FiRa Consortium is Well-Positioned to Drive Expansion of the Ultra-Wideband (UWB) Ecosystem Across Multiple Use Cases

Beaverton, OR – September 23, 2020 – The FiRa™ Consortium, a catalyst for bringing leading innovators together to drive UWB expansion forward, today announced fast-paced growth of its member network. Across its six membership levels, the FiRa Consortium has recently added 21 new members, each bringing expertise in support of expanding the use of UWB technology to establish an interoperable UWB-enabled ecosystem.

Thales, the newest Sponsor member, takes a seat on the FiRa Consortium Board of Directors, joining industry leaders Allegion, Bosch, HID, NXP, Qorvo and Samsung. Thales aims to bring its expertise to promote seamless and interoperable deployment across multiple industries seeking to be a part of the FiRa Consortium ecosystem. Fabien Courtiade, OEM Key Partners Director, Thales and new FiRa Consortium Board member says “Thales as a group is delighted to join the FiRa Consortium to contribute to the development of the UWB ecosystem and foster the adoption of unprecedented accurate user experiences such as indoor and vehicle positioning, information transfer or digital key.”

Cisco Systems, Redpoint Positioning Corporation and STMicroelectronics have joined the FiRa Consortium as Contributor members. As leaders in their respective fields, all envision how UWB technology can enhance future connectivity to support new and better user experiences across a variety of mobility use cases. Ramesh Songukrishnasamy, Director and Treasurer of the FiRa Board of Directors and Senior Vice President and CTO, HID Global, said “Such member diversity encourages us to approach the use of UWB from a variety of perspectives, ultimately resulting in the best possible outcomes for those who will use UWB technology for their daily interactions in an increasingly mobile world”.

New Associate members include BlueCats, Haoyun Technologies Co., Ltd and Sevenhugs. These new members share the FiRa Consortium’s passion for innovation that leads to the development of an open and interoperable UWB ecosystem, resulting in user adoption of the technology.

The FiRa Consortium also welcomes ten new Adopter members including Chengdu Jingwei Technology Co., Ltd., Cleverciti Systems GmbH, COMPRION GmbH, DONN Technology (Jiangsu) Co., Ltd., ForThink Technology Co., Ltd., LOCARIS TECHNOLOGY CO., LTD., Newradio Technology Co., Ltd., Nanjing Woxu Wireless Co., Ltd., UbiTraq Technology, Co., Ltd. and Wipelot.

Rounding out the new member roster is Test Lab member Dt&C Co., Ltd. and Academic and Educational members Carnegie Mellon University, Hochschule für Technik and Wirtschaft Dresden (University of Applied Sciences) and Universiteit Gent – IDLAB.

“Our Board of Directors has a high degree of confidence in the individuals and their organizations who collaborate daily to move the adoption of UWB technology and the FiRa Consortium forward,” said Charlie Zhang, Chair of the FiRa Consortium Board of Directors and Senior Vice President Engineering, Samsung Research America. “The organization has shown amazing resilience during these unprecedented times, experiencing global membership growth, taking the necessary actions to achieve stated milestones and moving forward on the journey to create a new interoperable ecosystem based on the use of UWB technology.”

In the coming months, the FiRa Consortium will work to ensure continued development of a widespread, interoperable ecosystem among chipsets, devices and solutions by focusing on the development of further technical specifications, finalizing a comprehensive certification program, detailing use cases for UWB and continuing to grow membership.

Additional FiRa Consortium Member Quotes:

“Cisco is thrilled to join the FiRa Consortium,” says Matt MacPherson, CTO of Wireless, Cisco Systems.
Mr. MacPherson went on to say “For over 20 years, Cisco has worked on bringing innovations in the field of indoor radio communication, including ranging and positioning. Ultra-Wideband technologies, with a combination of high accuracy and secure connections, offers great potential to contribute to multiple mobility use cases. Cisco is looking forward to contributing to define interoperability for this technology, enabling a better user experience over unlicensed radio communications.”

“We are technologists at our core, and we want to develop and promote the best location technology standards for a connected future,” said Chunjie Duan, Co-CEO and Co-Founder of Redpoint Positioning Corporation. “The Redpoint team is eager to contribute to our growing field of UWB research and development alongside others with the same goal. We believe that our knowledge of location and positioning technology, along with a deep understanding of use cases for that technology, will help move the industry forward.”

Hakim Jaafar, STM32 Wireless Marketing Director for STMicroelectronics said that “As a leader of 8-bit/32-bit general-purpose MCUs and secure MCUs and with a strong commitment to promote and deploy UWB technology into its broad STM32MCU portfolio, STMicroelectronics is backing initiatives to build UWB ecosystems like FiRa with other key industry players. STMicroelectronics recognizes that UWB technology can bring big benefits to existing use cases and will positively impact many markets. Having already deployed ST’s solution into industrial verticals, we’re moving quickly into other markets.”

“As a leading pioneer of UWB solutions, BlueCats is as committed as FiRa is to bringing digital awareness to the world thanks to the power of a truly interoperable UWB ecosystem,” said Nathan Dunn, CEO of BlueCats.

Simon Tchedikian, CEO & Founder of Sevenhugs, expanded on this sentiment saying that “Sevenhugs and FiRa share a common dedication to advancing new and innovative user experiences to drive the adoption of UWB technology. With increased momentum around UWB and prominent brands beginning to integrate, it’s important for us to collaboratively pave a path for mass-market success.”

About FiRa Consortium

Headquartered in Beaverton, OR, the FiRa Consortium is a member-driven organization dedicated to the development and widespread adoption of seamless user experiences using the secured fine ranging and positioning capabilities of Ultra-Wideband (UWB) technologies. To learn more about the FiRa Consortium, visit www.firaconsortium.org.

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