The global IoT industry is entering a new phase defined by high-precision spatial sensing. Ultra-wideband (UWB) brings centimeter-level positioning, strong interference immunity and robust encryption, and it is moving fast from industrial positioning and consumer electronics into smart homes, smart locks and car digital keys, becoming the foundational technology that links the physical world with digital space.
Industry figures point to steady growth in the global UWB market: roughly USD 2.0 to 2.5 billion in 2025, rising to somewhere between USD 3.0 and 4.0 billion by 2030. On top of the momentum already built in business-facing deployments such as car digital keys and precision positioning for industrial IoT, consumer-facing scenarios including smart homes and smart locks are becoming the core engine of the next breakout.
In 2026 the UWB industry reached a milestone with the formal release of the Aliro protocol. Published by the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA) as a cross-ecosystem interoperability specification, Aliro unifies the way phones and wearables interact with smart locks and access control devices, and supports UWB, BLE and NFC alike. It tears down the barriers between brands and ecosystems, making cross-brand frictionless unlocking and spatial interaction a reality, pushing UWB toward standard status in phones and smart locks and clearing a key obstacle to large-scale commercial deployment.
Commercial scale still comes with challenges to work through: cost, power consumption and multipath interference chief among them. Lowering those barriers will take volume chip production and continued algorithm optimisation.
At this pivotal moment, with the UWB ecosystem maturing and standards converging, Chipsbank — a 2025 IoT Star award winner, backed by twenty years of chip design and full-stack UWB capability — has become a benchmark company in the domestic UWB chip race.
As one of the first companies in China to invest in mobile storage controller chips, Chipsbank entered the UWB market in 2021. Relying on the transferability of its technology and its strength in real-world deployment, it rapidly built highly integrated, low-cost UWB solutions. The following interview explores that technical foundation, Chipsbank's UWB strategy, product deployment and forward-looking research, and unpacks how a domestic chip company is breaking through in the spatial sensing market.
Chipsbank has twenty years of chip design behind it and was one of the first companies in China to work on mobile storage controller chips. What are the core technologies and competitive moats Chipsbank has built up in that field over two decades, and how do they support the move into UWB?
Being an early mover in mobile storage controller chips gave Chipsbank twenty years to build a moat that is genuinely hard to replicate, spanning technology, volume production and cost: a proprietary low-cost, high-performance application-specific instruction-set processor, a full stack of Flash control algorithms, mixed-signal SoC capability, and the advantages that come with large-scale production and supply chain management. For UWB this translates into full-stack support reaching from chip architecture and RF baseband to security encryption and low-cost mass production — a solid technical foundation for chip design, manufacturing and solution deployment.
Chipsbank started building its UWB product line in 2021. Why did Chipsbank choose this market, and what was the thinking behind that decision?
Chipsbank committed to ultra-wideband in 2021, and it was not a case of following a short-lived trend. It was a long-term strategic choice made where four tailwinds overlapped: our existing technology extended naturally into the field, market demand was clearly taking off, ecosystem standards were maturing, and the company itself was moving upmarket.
On the strength of those twenty years of accumulated expertise, we ported the key advantages we had built in storage controllers directly into UWB, and quickly established competitive UWB SoC products that are highly integrated, low power, highly reliable and low cost.
At the same time, the global UWB ecosystem entered a period of explosive growth. The FiRa and Aliro specifications are converging, UWB support is spreading across phones, cars and smart homes, and scenarios such as smart locks, digital keys and IoT spatial sensing are seeing demand grow with unusual certainty.
Against that backdrop, Chipsbank built its offering around the CBU5000V210 UWB SoC, delivering the full stack — chip, algorithms, antenna, solution and production tooling — so customers get UWB they can deploy quickly and manufacture at scale. This is the second growth curve after storage controllers, and it marks our evolution from a storage chip company into a platform company spanning storage, connectivity and sensing.
The CBU5000V210 is already used in large interactive displays and TV remotes, and it also fits spatial interaction, location services, real-time following and radar sensing. How is deployment progressing in those other scenarios, and which ones stand out?
Chipsbank has completed full-stack delivery spanning chip, reference design, algorithms and production tooling, and multiple scenarios are now being adopted at scale in parallel. For spatial pointing and TV remote control we offer turnkey solutions, including the complete delivery of spatial fusion algorithms and mass-production workflows, helping customers move quickly from a working prototype to a shipping product.
Beyond that, we are working closely with customers on deep scenario validation or production ramp-up in smart locks, radar sensing, spatial audio, real-time following and industrial positioning.
Smart locks deserve a special mention. With the release of the Aliro protocol this year, the interface between phone and lock is now standardised, enabling interoperability across brands and ecosystems and accelerating UWB's arrival as standard equipment in phones and smart locks.
Chipsbank's UWB smart lock solution uses radar for low-power wake-up, then applies high-precision ranging and angle measurement to determine where the user is and what they intend, delivering a secure and reliable frictionless unlocking experience.
You have been building out UWB radar sensing ahead of the market and validating it jointly with ecosystem partners. Can you share where that work stands today, and which application scenarios you are targeting?
Chipsbank has completed a full-stack layout covering chip hardware, low-level algorithms, scenario solutions and joint ecosystem validation. Built on the CBU5000V210, we have unified communication and radar in a single chip that supports human presence detection, proximity sensing, micro-motion recognition and distance and angle measurement. We have completed joint scenario tuning and validation with several leading ecosystem partners, and some solutions have entered small-batch pilot production.
Going forward, UWB radar sensing will focus on two scenarios: smart homes and smart locks. We will deliver on requirements such as frictionless wake-up and spatial intelligence, keep sharpening our core competency in integrated sensing and communication, and work with ecosystem partners to make UWB radar standard for spatial intelligence.
About Chipsbank
Shenzhen Chipsbank Percomm Technologies Co., Ltd. is a national high-tech enterprise founded in 2003 by returned overseas students, and a national-level "little giant" specialised and sophisticated enterprise. Chipsbank focuses on the research, development and application of intelligent control chips, and is a core brand in domestic chip design and complete solutions. The company holds multiple patents and extensive practical expertise in modular mixed-signal SoC technology. Its portfolio covers storage controller chips, smart appliance controller chips, fingerprint recognition controller chips and ultra-wideband UWB controller chips, used widely in smart homes, mobile storage, consumer electronics, industrial control and automotive applications.