ON Semiconductor Corporation (ON) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

November 9, 2023

NASDAQ US Information Technology Semiconductors and Semiconductor Equipment special 47 min

Earnings Call Speaker Segments

Kyli Miller

executive
#1

Hello, everyone, and welcome to today's technology webinar, A Deep Dive Into Efficient Wireless Location Finding Systems brought to you by CoreHW, Unikie and onsemi. I'm [ Kyli Miller ] with onsemi and I'll be your moderator today. In this webinar, you will learn about the end-to-end positioning system that enables simpler and faster development for more accurate cost and power efficient asset tracking solutions. This system is based on onsemi's RSL15 MCU and incorporate software algorithms and components provided by Unikie and CoreHW, resulting in a fully integrated solution. At the end of the webinar, we'll be holding a Q&A session to answer any questions you may have. During the webinar, you can type your questions into the chat box on your right, and we will answer them at the end of the webinar. I will also share a slide deck of the webinar with you during the Q&A session. This webinar will be recorded and posted on onsemi.com. You will be notified via e-mail when the recording is available. Now let's meet today's presenters. Ben Widsten works on onsemi as a Solutions Product Manager of Bluetooth Low Energy Solutions within the Sensor Interface Division. Ben supports product road map development of hardware and software products, marketing activities and customer engagement. Our second speaker is Joe Tillison from CoreHW and works in business development for Americas. Joe is a long-time veteran of the semiconductor industry with a wide-ranging background of wireless technologies for IoT and positioning systems. Last but not least, is Markus Jakobsson from Unikie. Markus is the CBO of Connectivity and has a wide range of experience from the telecom industry, including product and business development, sales and deployments. Now let's get started with the webinar.

Ben Widsten

executive
#2

Thank you, Kyli. So as Kyli mentioned, I am Ben Widsten from onsemi and I'm going to kick off the webinar. Today, we're going to cover location finding systems. We'll start with an overview, introduce the 3 main components, which are a Bluetooth radio, antenna array and location engine and we'll have time for questions at the end. Okay. If you Google the word location looking for a definition, what are the definitions you get is a particular place or position. So location finding is finding that particular place or position and I added of something of interest. There needs to be a reason for finding that particular place or position. Then a location finding system is finding the particular place or position of something of interest in an automated way. How is the location found? There are many technologies, can be as simple as sound. "Hey, I'm over here." Networks, light. If you shine a flashlight in someone's eyes they look away because they know the direction of the light based on the intensity. The Earth's magnetic field can give you the -- your direction relative to the North Pole not sure you can build a location system out of that, so I have a question mark there, but it could be an input into a system. And there's also RF or radio frequency. You can use radio waves to get information about the signal, which you can distill down to direction and location. The webinar today is going to focus on the radio frequency options. Even within RF, there are several technology platforms or ways to do location finding systems. There's the basic RSSI or received signal strength indicator. This is basically measuring how big your signal is. In theory, the bigger the signal is, the closer you are from the transmitter. This is kind of like the, hey, I'm over here, the louder it is, the closer you are or is somebody yelling louder gets a little bit hard to tell. So using RSSI is great because essentially any RF technology can support it. You can measure the received signal strength, but it's relatively low accuracy because there's lots of variables of the signal strength and then reflections and things like that, but it's simple, and it does get the job done for some applications. There's also ultra-wideband. This is an RF technology that's designed primarily for high accuracy location finding, and it is very accurate, but it comes with high power consumption. Another option is Bluetooth Low Energy and specifically using the Bluetooth low energy direction finding features. It offers excellent accuracy and low power consumption. In 2019, the Bluetooth SIG or Special Interest Group released Bluetooth Low Energy 5.1 specification, where they added the Angle of Arrival and Angle of Departure direction-finding features. This is the core lowest level technology that's used to generate a direction. The -- that is the basic input into the overall system that can be used to find the location. Specifically today, we're talking about AoA or Angle of Arrival. This is the enabling feature of the location finding system. There are three main components to location finding system. The Bluetooth radio, the antenna array and the location engine. Just to give a quick picture of how this fits in. The Bluetooth radio would be in the tags at the bottom here. So the orange line on the bottom is a floor. The orange line on the top is a ceiling. This is not necessarily only for indoor locating systems, but you need the kind of overhead component. So you could maybe put these on a street light, but most of the examples are better served indoors because you can put these locators and tags -- locators on ceiling and tag anywhere inside. So Bluetooth radio is in the small tag like is a mobile and can move around. There's also a Bluetooth radio in the locator that's on the ceiling. The locator has the antenna array and in the back end of the system, there is a location engine. We'll go into more detail in all these components as we move along. So starting with the tag and locator up close on the left here is an example of a tag. The tag requires just a Bluetooth radio. That's all you need. So on the first example of the green circular PCB there, there's all kinds of components and [ gizmos ] and things on there. It can do lots of fancy things. That's if you wanted to, it doesn't necessarily need to. The example of the skateboard looking PCB on the bottom is just a very simple Bluetooth radio. This is actually a Murata module, and it does nothing about the tag feature, and that might be all you need. So it's really very open-ended on what you want to tag to do in the simplest form but just needs to be a Bluetooth radio. The locator has a very cool antenna array. This is the other side of Angle of Arrival using antenna array to receive that signal and distill it down into the direction. It also has the Bluetooth radio. The small green PCB there on the right-hand side, and it connects to the antenna array. So we'll go into further detail of each of these 3 main components. I will talk about the Bluetooth radio for onsemi. Joe will cover the antenna array from CoreHW and Markus will cover the location engine from Unikie. So let's get into the Bluetooth radio. The device we're covering today is RSL15 from onsemi. It comes in a wide variety of packages. There's a standard QFN, a WLCSP for very small applications. There's even an automotive version of the package, and there's a Murata SIP module that includes all the passive components and the antenna. You just plunk it down on your Board and you have a tag. And the right-hand side is a picture of the RSL15 Evaluation Board. So RSL15 has 4 main value propositions, ultra-low power. Now if it's a Bluetooth low energy device, it should be low power. But RSL15 is very low power. And we've proven that by being #1 or #2 in three of the most important EEMBC benchmark scores. In the ULPMark score where we're second, we're only second to RSL10, which is our previous generation product. So when you think RSL15 you think ultra-low power. RSL15 is also a microcontroller. It's not just a Bluetooth radio. It is a full-on microcontroller, has an ARM Cortex-M33 core clocked up to 48 megahertz, all the peripherals, GPIOs, ADCs, bells and whistles, you'd expect in the microcontroller and a comprehensive software development to get started on power microcontroller security. RSL15 has the latest and greatest in security features from ARM, which offers hardware-based root of trust, secure boot, hardware accelerated cryptographic algorithms and anything -- essentially anything you would want in a security system in the microcontroller. So we covered ultra-low-power microcontroller security. And yes, there is a Bluetooth radio in there. RSL 15 supports Bluetooth Low Energy 5.2 and all the features from 5.1. So it gives you long range extended advertising, the Angle of Arrival, Angle of Departure direction finding features and many more. For those technical people that maybe didn't believe me, RSL15 is a microcontroller. Here's a high-level block diagram of all the bells and whistles that a microcontroller should have. Flash, RAM, processor cores all the peripherals. I won't get in too much detail into this, but just think of it as a microcontroller that can do BLE, ultra-lower power and secure. Now why would you choose RSL15 or location finding system? This is the real question. The transition, there we go. Well, number one is low power. If RSL 15 is used in the tag, which is the really small PCB and you can put fancy plastics around it whatever you would -- however you'd like it to look. This is a device that's going to be attached to, say, a pallet or a piece of medical equipment moving around in the hospital. It needs to be small, it needs to have a long battery life. If you have a low-power Bluetooth radio, you can have longer-lasting batteries or your batteries could be smaller and lower cost, but still achieve the battery lifetime that your product needs. RSL15 is secure. What does this do for a location finding system where you can prevent unauthorized tags from entering your network. You don't want a competitor or maybe something that someone that's been malicious in trying to spoof a tag that could somehow think -- a device is not where it is and could result in theft or something like that. They just simply can't get onto the network because they won't pass the security protocols. And you also prevent unauthorized access through a tag. If a tag was somehow compromised, it might access the network and get further into your system while security will prevent that. Another reason for RSL15 is the software. The sample code is available in the SDK today for download at onsemi.com/rsl15. There is a simple application for the tag, which is called an advertiser at the code level and a locator, which is called scanner at the code lever, you can download code today and have software for a tag and have software for locator. Another reason why RSL15 is good in location finding systems is that onsemi has partnered with industry experts, CoreHW and Unikie. Through this partnership, we have developed a direction-finding roadshow kit. This is a -- the kit shown here can be shipped or hand delivered to a customer site or to trade shows where we can set up this demo using these tripods and set up the locators and there's a couple of tags, the green PCBs or tags. And you can carry these tags around and see the location tracking on the position engine on the PC and we can set up a demo and show you exactly what it can do. It demonstrates the three main components, the Bluetooth radio, the antenna array and the position engine. We've got a screenshot here from an instructional video. This is Taylor Lee, our application engineer, the primary designer of the Direction Finding Roadshow kit. I must admit we set this kit up many times in our office and we had a lot of fun with it. We were very excited about it. Where we got a little too excited and forgot to take a picture of the whole thing set up. So I have a screenshot from the instructional video that Taylor's made to show how to set it up and didn't really give an overview of it, unfortunately. But if you want to see it in person, let's see what it can do and understand what it can do for you and your systems, please contact any sales -- onsemi sales, and we can do a demo for you. And with that, I will pass it over to Joe.

Joe Tillison

attendee
#3

All right. Good. Thank you, Ben. So I'm Joe Tillison from CoreHW. I just have a few slides here to cover. Like Ben mentioned in his intro using BLE 5.1 for direction finding requires you to have an array of antennas. And there are two different ways to do this, the Angle of Arrival method and the Angle of Departure method. The Angle of Arrival method -- in this method, the device that's being tracked transmits a special direction-finding signal. This could be a wrist band or a lanyard that's on a person or it could be a tag that's just attached to some important asset, and it could be mobile or it could be stationary. The receiver is inside of a device called the locator, and that's where that antenna array lives. Since the -- from basic RF since the propagation delay from the transmitter is just ever so slightly different for each antenna element, each one of those elements receives a different phase shifted version of that incoming signal. And then that phase information from each of the antenna elements is provided to a piece of software called the angle solver. The angle solver also has a physical model of what the antenna design looks like. And then by comparing the phase difference between each of the antenna elements, the angle solver is able to use some trigonometry and compute the angle to the transmitter. Some AoA systems can use a single locator and then they also use -- so they get the angle, but then they also use receive signal strength to just get a crude estimate of the distance. But most AoA systems will have multiple locators so that the angles from multiple points can be triangulated to calculate the exact 3D position of that tag. That happens in a piece of software called the location engine. The angle solver software can either be housed with the antenna array in the locator or it can run in the same piece of hardware as the location engine. The biggest advantage of AoA is that the tag can be really simple and because all of the complex calculations happen in that fixed infrastructure where the locators and the software angle solver and the location engine are. In the -- for the Angle of Departure method, it's more or less the reverse of AoA. In this case, the transmitter is actually in the locator and it sends multiple copies of that direction finding signal by sequencing the transmission one at a time through each of the antenna elements in that array. And then the receiver receives these multiple copies of the signal, which again are all phase shifted from one another. And by comparing the phase difference of those incoming signals that can calculate the angle to locator. The receiver also has to have some information about the locator antenna design as well. So in AoD, all of those complex calculations happen in the tag. And so that means the tags are much more complex. They need a lot more processing power compared to a simple tag that might be used in the AoA method. In both cases, the location -- the locator has to have that antenna array and the tag just has one simple antenna -- one single antenna. I would say, by far, most of the use cases for BLE direction finding use the AoA method because of the simplicity of the tag at such a big advantage. The tags can be super small. They can be really inexpensive, and they can last for years on a coin-cell battery. AoD would require a tag something like a cell phone and so far, cell phones don't support that technology today. So let's take a look at what happens in that antenna array. The special direction finding packet from BLE is -- uses something called the Continuous Tone Extension, or CTE. CTE is a supplemental signal that's added at the end of a normal BLE packet. It's basically a modulated series of 1 bits with no widening. So it looks like a constant 1 megahertz sinusoid. It can be up to 160 microseconds long and it's sampled once every microsecond. So with 160 microsecond CTE and an antenna array that has 16 antennas. It means each signal gets sampled 10 times. And like I said, other than the CTE, this is a normal BLE packet that can carry other information. So for example, a tag might also transmit ID information, timestamps or battery level status and so on. In the locator, there's a BLE receiver which controls the RF switch timing and takes those samples from each antenna element while it's doing all the sampling during that CTE period. And then -- so for each sample, the BLE chip outputs the signals IQ data, which is a representation of the magnitude and phase taken during that sample. That goes to the angle-solver software. The antenna array itself has to be very carefully designed to minimize the phase mismatch between all of the different RF signal pass as much as possible. And that means the signal pass have to be carefully designed, you have to understand the effects of all the parasitic's minimized cross-coupling uniform, precise antenna spacing and so on. And that's because any error that gets introduced in those signal paths contributes to the total overall system error. So you need to minimize those as much as possible. It also means carefully selecting that RF switch for the same reason because any mismatches in the switch design itself between channels, introduce more error into the system. And as you can see in that block diagram, CoreHW provides both the AoA switch and the antenna array. So this slide shows an overview of the antenna arrays that are offered by CoreHW. Each one of them has some features that are in common. They're all uniform rectangular array. All of them have been very carefully optimized so that we can minimize the phase and balance between the antenna chains, like I just talked about. They all use a 16-pole antenna switch from CoreHW and they all have an FTC connector for the digital control signals and a U.FL connector for the RF, which connected over to the Bluetooth SoC. The ANT1 antenna is roughly 6 inches by 6 inches in size, and it uses 8 dual-polarized antenna elements. There's actually 16 antennas there. It can provide system accuracy as precise as plus or minus 40 centimeters or roughly 16 inches. This antenna works best with tags that use a generic low-cost antenna, maybe a PCB trace antenna or a Ceramic Chip antenna. The ANT2 is the same physical size as ANT1, but it uses 16 elements of a proprietary patented patch antenna design that uses circular polarization. And that has the advantage of virtually eliminating the effects of multipath. It's our most accurate design and can give you position accuracy as precise as plus or minus 10 centimeters or roughly 4 inches. The ANT3 on the right uses the same circular polarization as the ANT2, but it's 1/4 of the size at roughly 3 inches by 3 inches. It has four antenna elements. So it doesn't have the ultimate accuracy of the ANT2, but it offers a good compromise between the smaller size and still gives pretty good accuracy of plus or minus 50 centimeters or about 20 inches. All of these antennas are sold as off-the-shelf products in production volume and they're all in full production today. The roadshow kit that Ben mentioned in his slides uses the ANT1 antenna inside of the locator with the RSL15. And those are my slides. So the next presenter is Markus Jakobsson from Unikie, who's going to cover the software elements of the AoA system.

Markus Jakobsson

attendee
#4

Can you hear me? Okay. Great. Software is quite strange some time. So let's talk about the software. Hello, everybody, I'm Markus from Unikie. So third component we'll cover is the software for the Bluetooth positioning. Now we've seen that how does the Bluetooth new standard work. We've also seen that we already have existing tag hardware. We have antennas with high accuracy and that already works together again from a functioning system. Having tags and locator together, well, you get the IQ data, you get the signals that you can position things with, what you actually need and want when you are building a functioning positioning software is basically, you want to know where is my tags, what kind of data analysis can you do after different positions of the objects we are tracking. So for this, you need to have software and Unikie has a positioning system, especially designed for Bluetooth. So what we do is, first of all, we calculate the position of each tag. So we get the signals from the locators of -- that the tags are sending and we combine those and have algorithms for calculating what is the actual X, Y, Z position of each tag. And then we also configure the tags. We manage the tags and locators in the system so that you can set up the system, you know where our my locators, and you can calibrate the system so that you get accurate results from all the tags. And also importantly, that you have APIs towards the business systems. So that basically, when you have the system set up you will get the actual position data and not have to worry about how is the positions calculated. What is -- how does the whole thing actually work on a single level. So our system usually when we work with use cases, we are looking at solutions that have a need for sub-meter accuracy. As we heard, we can get much more accurate. Usually having the meter or so is enough for most of the applications and also very scalable. So we deploy it in the cloud or we can deploy it on the edge or even part of the calculations can be done in the locators themselves, if you want to have let's say, real-time systems and the locators themselves can be efficiently calculating the angles of the tags. Just [indiscernible] is also implementing security. So the communications is encrypted and the whole system is secure. And then the IPA layer upwards is the abstraction layer that you want to have when you're actually implementing the positioning system for your particular business needs and segments that you're operating in. I will go through our software system. There's 3 main functions of it. So the first one is the positioning engine. So this is the real algorithms for calculating the X, Y, Z and also having the angle calculations of the signals. The second one is the management system. So here, you have -- you have a set of tools for managing the installation and configuration of all the tags and all the locators in your system. So you can keep track of them and you can set them up, you can configure them remotely. Also, it is enabling to distribute the forward to the locators and tags, so we can update the software and you have also implementing the security for the whole system. And upwards to external systems, you can then offer APIs for this management. So if you want to issue some updates or you want to change the configuration of the tags that's also possible. Then the third one is the application level. So the other systems now basically just concerned with calculating the positions. But then depending on what you want to use the positions for. You can also implement applications in our software already to provide some additional APIs towards your application. So for example, if we want to have already tracking the tags, we can have APIs for accessing that tracking information. We can have calibration of the whole system or automatically detecting some set of changes and dealing with that automatically. We can also have a history of the positions, so we can gather that all the tag positions and then do various data analysis on that and calculate some business statistics and KPIs for the area that you are tracking and there can be other various monitoring and applications and graphical map applications. So next, let's go to use case. So we have a retail example of what would it mean, what kind of data could you get out of the system if you deploy it in a store. So we have a market where we have BLE tags, attached to all the baskets and then cords in the store. And once they are moved, it will activate to be BLE tag to start sending signals. And in the roofs, we then have the locators who are receiving the signals and sending the angles received from that tags. And based on this information from the different tags, we can then monitor where they are in the stores. We can monitor all the customers, consumers that are in the store at the same time and record also the positions of the cards, how they are moving around in store. This one meter accuracy is enough for this use case because what you want to know as a store owner is that which coils are used, which product segments are most popular, what is the common routes that are being taken in the store. So we can set up the system to reflect this accuracy that's needed. An example of the data that you can then or how you can use the data is that you can map the different routes. What is the most used aisles? What is the most used exits? And where are the consumers not finding themselves that often? And we can also define various KPIs, for example, what are the places where the consumers stop for a long time or have trouble finding the different goods they're looking for. So this was an example of how the Bluetooth -- what it can enable in a store retail setting. There is a video link here if you want to look at, this is a free video showing some use cases. What we offer in the software is, of course, the role positioning data. So there's APIs for gathering the data and storing yourself or we can also add the applications to analyze and model the data and define different KPIs for your business. So in this retail, we can have duration of the customer visits. We can have the most used routes. We're going to have the hotspots and other customer behavior that we want -- the store wants to analyze and make changes in the layout of the store or change how the products are set up. So how can you use our system? Pole positioning system together with onsemi hardware products is all you need to set up a fully functioning system. Our software components also can be used separately. So the localization algorithms, they can also be run for any other purpose. So any software that wants to have Bluetooth localization. The complete positioning system is something that you would use when you want to have. You just want to access to position data. And then this software is covering all that's needed for the calculations, for the algorithms, for the positioning and also for storing the data and providing it as APIs. And then in Bluetooth custom software development, we also work on the actual locators. So we worked also with onsemi and CoreHW in their product. And if you have your own product and technology that's based on Bluetooth, we can help you with the software in that. That concludes my presentation. So we'll hand it over to Kyli for questions.

Kyli Miller

executive
#5

All right. Wonderful. Thank you for the excellent presentation. We have received a number of questions, so we'll jump right in. [Operator Instructions] All right. First question, we have, have you tried the system with mobile locators? If so, what's the accuracy?

Joe Tillison

attendee
#6

Mike can take that one. The system doesn't really work with mobile locators because the locator is a part of the fixed infrastructure and the position of each locator needs to be accurately mapped on a floor map and that's what's used in the calculation with the position engine to give you the exact 3D position of that moving tag. I don't know, Markus, if you want to add anything else to that?

Markus Jakobsson

attendee
#7

Yes, that's the way we have done it. So the system actually is able to calibrate for the positions of the locators. But the idea is that it will notice that what is the fixed positioning of those? And what is the angles that they are kind of mounted on but having mobile locators is not something that we have used.

Joe Tillison

attendee
#8

Yes. Now the AoD method also still has fixed locators as part of the infrastructure, but the tags are mobile, and that's where the calculations happen. So that, again, is the reverse use case, but it's just not very common.

Ben Widsten

executive
#9

And I can add, in our roadshow kit with the tripods where you set up the locator, once you have them positioned around your room, there is a calibration procedure to basically find that position and get it into the system. So it's a fixed position. So the answer is no, we haven't tried with the mobile locator. If you did, I suppose, you could find the position relative to the locator but not an absolute position relative to any of the space around you.

Kyli Miller

executive
#10

All right. Wonderful. Next question, how long does a tag battery last?

Ben Widsten

executive
#11

I can take that one. So a tag battery can last on the order of years, but there are many factors that go into determining the battery lifetime, one would be the capacity. Second would be whether you chose RSL15 or [ RF ] as your Bluetooth radio, lower power, the better. But also what you want to do with our Bluetooth radio if you want a very high -- low latency system that responds very quickly, you need to send data more often that consumes more power. If you wanted to have accelerometer or other things on the board that we consume more power, too. So really, there's a lot of factors, but it can be in the order of years for some applications.

Kyli Miller

executive
#12

Next question, what is the maximum speed of the tags before it gets to inaccurate or unreliable?

Joe Tillison

attendee
#13

I can chime in on that one again, maybe. That's a good question because a lot of times, tags are in motion. So I think you're -- that's what you're asking about is for tags that are moving. I don't know that there's a clear answer because it depends. The more the tag is in motion, the more you need to advertise or the faster that you need to advertise. And there is ultimately a limit on how many advertising packets you can send per second. I don't remember the number off the top of my head. But that will determine the latency in the system, and that will ultimately determine how accurate that your motion can be tracked. But I would say we've experimented with systems, with people walking at a fast pace. It easily tracks those. We've experimented with systems, with people moving at a little faster, maybe not running full speed, and it tracks those. So anything that's, let's say, moving at the speed of a forklift or a human, those can be still pretty accurate.

Markus Jakobsson

attendee
#14

Yes. And I can add to that, that this is a configurable technology. So there's not kind of one setup that will work for everything in the same way. So either you could have -- the focus is on having really long 5-year battery life and you want to send as seldom as possible your signals. And maybe you don't want to send at all when you're moving, you just want to send when you have the targets in a new position, and it wants to broadcast it now -- I have changed position. Or you have the opposite like you describe that you want to really accurately track the motion. So then when you are moving, you will be sending all the time really rapidly. And then you can have quite rapid moving the tags.

Kyli Miller

executive
#15

All right. Thank you. Next question, can a tag include sensors, for example, a temperature sensor?

Ben Widsten

executive
#16

I can take that one. Yes, absolutely. I showed 2 different PCBs for tags. The red one had just minimal components on it and the green one had a few other components on it. So yes, there's really no limit to what you could do on the tags. You could add temperature sensors, humidity, light, vibration, whatever you want. Again, it may impact power consumption, but that data can be sent up to the locator. And so I guess the better way to ask that question is, since it's Bluetooth, we don't just have to send location data, we can also send any data of your choice. So the answer is yes, sensors and other things can be added to tags.

Kyli Miller

executive
#17

Next question, what is the maximum distance between tags and locators?

Joe Tillison

attendee
#18

Good question. While there is not a hard and fast rule, it's going to depend on the height of the locator in the installation because like if you remember from one of Ben's first slides, the locator sort of has a conical view of the area where the tags are so that it can track them. I would say, as a general rule of thumb that the locators should be spaced at something like 12 to 15 meters apart in a grid if it's a super large area. And I guess your question was about the tags and locators. The distance from the locator to the tag is, of course, going to be determined by the transmit power of the tag itself. So again, that's a compromise between your battery life and what kind of range you want to support.

Kyli Miller

executive
#19

Wonderful. Next question, how to build your own localization finding kit?

Ben Widsten

executive
#20

So I can take that one. We would be happy to work with you to build your own localization finding kit from an evaluation perspective. Please contact onsemi sales, and we can provide you with the resources and the contacts to build your own. But before that, we might want to show you the roadshow kit and you can touch and feel it for yourself and give it a go, and then we can go from there. So please contact onsemi sales.

Kyli Miller

executive
#21

All right. Thank you. Next question, do the CoreHW antenna boards include the RSL15?

Joe Tillison

attendee
#22

No, they don't. The antenna board just has the array of antenna elements and the RF switch. So you actually need to connect that to a separate board with the digital control signals and RF. That's what would go to the RSL15 to control the antenna board.

Kyli Miller

executive
#23

And then how many locators are needed in a system for 10-centimeter accuracy?

Joe Tillison

attendee
#24

Yes. That's another great question. I kind of hinted at this a minute ago. As you can probably guess, the -- any system installation needs to take into a lot of different factors including the size of that area that you're covering, the height of the locators, the latency we just talked about and the accuracy and so on. But I would say again, locators that are spaced 12 to 15 meters apart in a grid. We'll give you that accuracy that we've seen with our antenna boards. Maybe a generic answer would be 4 locators for an area that's a couple of hundred square meters. But every installation is different. So if you need help sort of assessing what an installation might look like. You can just contact us through our website, and we're happy to help.

Kyli Miller

executive
#25

And then another question, what is the budgetary cost of RSL15?

Ben Widsten

executive
#26

That is a great question. I will defer that to our sales. Please contact onsemi sales, and we can discuss pricing for your application.

Kyli Miller

executive
#27

Next question, how does CoreHW provide samples or does CoreHW provide samples of their antenna boards?

Joe Tillison

attendee
#28

Okay. No, you can't get them directly off of our website, for example, but we do have all 3 of our antenna boards stocked at DigiKey and you can buy them from there in single piece quantities.

Kyli Miller

executive
#29

We see that was our last question. All right, thank you very much, Ben, Joe and Markus. These are all the questions that we have for today. So on behalf of onsemi, CoreHW and Unikie, I would like to thank everyone for attending, and I wish you guys have a great day.

Ben Widsten

executive
#30

Thank you.

Joe Tillison

attendee
#31

Thank you, everyone.

Markus Jakobsson

attendee
#32

Thank you. Bye-bye.

For developers and AI pipelines

Programmatic access to ON Semiconductor Corporation earnings transcripts and 32,000+ others is available through the EarningsCalls.dev REST API. Plans from $24.99/month — full transcripts, speaker segments, full-text search, and the recently-added /api/v1/transcripts/recent polling endpoint for ETL pipelines.