Today we announced the formation of the Automotive Working Group within the DASH7 alliance, another important milestone for DASH7 as we move beyond our supply chain roots into adjacent markets that are ripe for wireless sensor networking innovation.
Today’s announcement is the result of the work of many companies, including RFind, Michelin, Volvo, and others, who have either promoted the idea of DASH7 to their internal or external customers or who are actively building DASH7 solutions for their automotive customers. While the genesis of much of this hoopla about DASH7 in automotive is in supply chain applications, a funny thing happened on the way to the distribution center: someone pointed out that the frequencies used for active tire pressure monitoring today were 433 MHz plus a 125 khz LF wakeup signal. Yet today’s solutions are 100% proprietary and this has been the cause of any number of headaches by various automotive ecosystem members. So, as the only “active RFID” standard in the world at 433 MHz that uses an optional 125 khz wakeup signal (more on this later), moving to standardize TPMS via DASH7 is not exactly a long putt.
More on TPMS at a later date, but we see TPMS as only the beginning, as there is a broad opportunity to provide a single standard for low power, narrowband wireless communications within the vehicle. Today, it doesn’t exist in any car that we’re aware of, so when you consider the vast numbers of sensors in an automobile today plus the growth in sensors in the vehicle, the opportunity for DASH7 is big. Exhaust monitoring, for example.
Think of the automobile as the “third place” for DASH7, with business and the home being the first two.
Today’s announcement points to the hard work from the folks at Melexis, a very cool semiconductor company based in the EU that focuses heavily on automotive. Melexis is co-chairing the automotive working group (actually a subgroup within the Outreach Working Group) and is tackling a number of relevant issues including that of standardizing an optional LF wakeup (125 khz) signal that can be paired with a 433 MHz DASH7 radio.
LF is important on many levels. In its most basic form, it ’s used to “wake up” a sleeping tag or put it to sleep, with obvious power management benefits. But LF has many other uses as well — improved location granularity, configuring or programming a tag, or even powering a tag (energy harvesting). The US DoD uses LF in a growing number of cases for purposes of location granularity already, and as I mentioned above, it’s already used heavily in TPMS applications.
I’ve written before about the “harmonious” relationship between 13.56 MHz “HF” RFID and DASH7. Today, I’m pleased to be able to start the conversation around another harmonious relationship between 433 MHz and 125 khz LF wakeup.
For more detail on the automotive working group, click here.
