By Allan Maurer

HUNTSVILLE, AL—Time Domain Corp., an Ultra Wideband (UWB) real time location company, has found the sweet spot in RFID, itself a hot sector.

The 60-employee company, which raised $25 million in September, $15 million of it from Pharos Capital Group, is seeking additional funding of from $7 million to $10 million.

Time Domain is one of 40 innovative companies presenting at the Second Annual Southeast Venture Conference in Tysons Corner, VA, Feb. 27-28. (See: www.seventure.org for more information on the conference).

UWB is a radio technology. It can be used at very low energy levels for short-range high-bandwidth communications by using a larger portion of the radio spectrum.

Will Webb, Time Domain CEO, tells TechJournal South that the company has found a sweet spot in radio frequency identification marketing. “RFID is itself a very established growth market,” he says. “Real time location is the fastest growing application in the sector. And UWB is the most sought after technology in that business. It boils down to being in the right place at the right time.”

RFID sweet spot
RFID is growing at about 18.4 percent a year. Active RFID, the subsector that includes real time location, grows about 27.4 percent a year. Real time location itself, is expected to growing 38 percent a year. “Looking at it that way, we know we’re headed in the right direction,” says Webb.

Time Domain’s UWB PulsOn products are similar to global positioning systems (GPS), but have much higher accuracy and can track high value assets to within a few feet or even inches. UWB offers a number of advantages over competing technologies.

Ultra short duration pulses yield UWB signals, extreme low power, excellent immunity to
interference from other radio systems and high bandwidth, multi-channel performance and coexistence with existing spectrum users are some of the key features of PulsON technology.

“We knew there was market pull,” Webb adds. “Three things the market wants, accuracy, battery life in tags, and capacity—how many tags can a system handle in a tight area—they have not been getting or have been disappointed with.”

“We’re the UWB smart guys”
Webb says Time Domain is both a pioneer and the leader in ultralightband technology and has garnered 120 patents worldwide. Its radio frequency tech uses very short, pico-second pulses of energy that allow its products to “have unmatched location precision.”

“We’re the ultrawideband smart guys,” says Webb.

UWB also boasts very low power consumption and short transmission times between tagged items and a base station.

Its short ultrawideband pulses can even penetrate through walls. “We’re the first company to have through-wall motion detecting radar,” he says.

While the company commits to ensuring its system’s accuracy at locating tagged people or items at one to three feet, one defense contractor was thrilled to find it accurate to eight inches, Webb says. Other systems are accurate from 30 feet to 10 feet or so, he says.

A real differentiator
That means Time Domain’s system allows a hospital to determine that a piece of high value equipment is in, say, Room 22 by bed A5 rather than pinpointing it only to a hospital wing. “That accuracy is critical for safety, security and profit issues,” says Webb.

Because of its short-pulsed transmission, Time Domain tags last four-years rather than months. “That’s only limited by the batteries we could get,” says Webb. “It’s an advantage our customers appreciate.”

Finally, he notes, “Because of physics, most other systems can track about 500 tags. Ours can track in excess of 5,000. That’s a real differentiator,” Webb says.

Webb notes the company was the first to put its cutting-edge tech on silicon as well.

Frost & Sullivan recognized Time Domain in 2007 with its North American Award for Technology Innovation.

It said at the tme, “TDC flagship PulsON UWB technology has the capability of fusing radar, positioning, and wireless communications into a single chipset,” says Frost & Sullivan Research Analyst Krishnakumar Srinivasan. “Usage of an UWB spectrum and a variety of transmission reception and modulation techniques characterize the evolution of PulsON.”

It recently introduced a “dual-mode” product Webb says “Is really going to rock the industry.” Dual-mode allows a customer who already has a Wi-Fi system installed to switch to UWB when more precise accuracy is needed.

Time Domain is currently working with strategic partnerships and resellers to integrate PulsON technology into a variety of solutions.

The company’s markets include military and government security as well as commercial customers.

“As different customers come in with a little variation on the theme,” Webb says, “We can develop different models for different equipment manufacturers. We have an already primed pump. We want to use it more and better.”

On the Web: www.timedomain.com

 

Southeast Venture Conference, February 29 – March 1, 2012 at the Ritz Carlton in Tysons Corner, VA – Where Smart Money Meets Smart People.
www.seventure.org

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