Mauna Kea Semiconductors
Low-power UWB Chips for High-precision Location and Direction Finding

Ultra-wideband technology (UWB) has been around for quite some time, but it wasn’t until recently that it witnessed exponential growth. Adopted by only a few pioneering companies, UWB is still in its early stages of development as many businesses attempt to identify its use cases for applications. One brand that helps companies propel by rapid strides and leverage UWB technology in their operations is Mauna Kea Semiconductors (MK Semi).

Founded by industry veteran Dr. Yifeng Zhang and other Silicon Valley serial entrepreneurs of the semiconductor industry, the company is acting as a catalyst for changing and developing the ultra-low power UWB solution. The product developed enables high-precision location and direction-finding applications in automotive, IoT, smartphones, and wearable devices.

MK Semi offers low-power UWB solutions to device OEMs and ODMs for complete location and direction-finding functionalities. The innovative solutions enable rapid design and product deployment and offer very high levels of integration. The factors mentioned above also differentiate MK Semi’s UWB chips from the existing solutions in the market.

Dr. Yifeng Zhang and his team gathered first-hand insights from their previous customers’ engagements about the difficulties faced while integrating IoT devices with other discrete solutions. Realizing that customers were not concerned with the underlying hardware technologies, Dr. Zhang and his team ingrained very high levels of integrations into its UWB chips.

“We offer very high levels of integration, which denotes less effort from a customer and system design point of view and delivery of better graded UWB solutions,” says Dr. Zhang, President and CEO of MK Semi.

Given that UWB and associated technologies are still in their nascent stages, finding a suitable use case and application often requires a broad understanding of RF switches, bandpass filters, matching networks, and more subject matter expertise that only a few possess.

Driven by its customer-centric impulse to free the customers from the intricacies of UWB technology, MK Semi developed a chip that is effortless to integrate into other devices, giving users faster time to market. As Dr. Zhang says, the company handles technological complexity for clients and allows them to focus on mission-critical operations.

By integrating all the associated technologies into a minuscule low-power UWB chip, MK Semi enables businesses to reduce costs and swiftly and seamlessly integrate the chips into other components of any form factor. In the 40nm technology range, its UWB chip is currently the lowest power solution in the world. This enables businesses to make their IoT devices last a year without battery maintenance. Unlike other products, the company’s UWB chips cover 3-9GHz of the spectrum. This unique feature profoundly represents MK Semi’s vision to make UWB products that cater to global applications.

“We provide coverage for the complete spectrum so that customers can use a certain portion spectrum in the specific regions they are interested in,” adds Dr Zhang. In addition to making the chip extremely small, low-power, and highly integrative, MK Semi has integrated four dedicated receiver frontends to enable 3D location capabilities without any external components. The company is broadening the chip’s sensing capabilities to detect breath rates in bio-sensing applications. MK Semi also offers UWB modules and development kits to enhance the usage of UWB further.

Owing to these unique attributes, MK Semi’s chips can be integrated into smartphones, geotags, trackers, and other devices to enhance consumer and industrial IoT applications across various industries. The company is backed by OPPO, Lightspeed Ventures, MediaTek Venture, and many other tier-one investors globally.

Enabling MK Semi to develop these groundbreaking UWB technologies is its unique customer engagement model, where it regularly takes feedback from clients and constantly improves its hardware and software based on their requirements, market demands, and the maturity of UWB technology. Though the benefits of MK Semi’s chips speak for themselves, the team’s long-standing experience in the semiconductor industry has consolidated its position as a force to be reckoned with.

Dr Zhang and his team have a strong proficiency in digital, analog, and mixed-signal design, as well as high-performance, low-power, and highly-integrated system-on-chip technologies. Being the original cohort that developed ultra-low power Bluetooth chips and AOA/AOD technologies, the team is posed with the expertise to venture into UWB and democratize its usage across industries. As a visionary, Dr. Zhang anticipates UWB to radically transform from being a communication tool to a sensory tool. Looking forward, Mauna Kea Semiconductors will focus on augmenting sensing capabilities using UWB for high-precision location and direction determination at much lower power consumption.