Sensor Product of the Year
Company Name: ARIA SENSING
Product Name: HYDROGEN 4×4 UWB Radar SoC
Supporting Statement:
ARIA Sensing is happy to submit the candidature of its product Hydrogen, a breakthrough Ultra-Wideband (UWB) 4Tx/4Rx Radar System-on-Chip (SoC) that redefines the future of sensing and Physical AI through a unique combination of high-resolution 3D sensing, ultra-low power and near-zero-latency intelligence.
Integrated across ARIA Sensing’s emPulse™ module family, Hydrogen is the world’s first UWB SoC to integrate scalable 3D sensing into a single IC. In an industry where engineers are often forced to compromise between precision, power, reliability, and cost, Hydrogen removes these trade-offs.
In short, it establishes a brand new benchmark for radar sensor performance in embedded, automotive and industrial applications.
High Resolution 3D Sensing, cmWave Radar
At the core of ARIA Sensing’s Hydrogen is an advanced 4-transmit, 4-receive MIMO radar architecture implementing cm-Wave RF, delivering exceptional features that outperform existing solutions – other UWB or mmWave radar chips – in a number of ways:
• Operating ranges exceeding 10m with angular resolution as low as <10°;
• Lower power consumption by at least one order of magnitude;
• cmWave goes through non-metallic materials and obstacles (greatly simplifying mechanical integration and reducing system costs);
• 3D-capable, suitable to, track and distinguish multiple targets without the need for external processing
This ultra-high-resolution sensing enables applications such as vital signs and human activity monitoring in healthcare (e.g. fall detection), occupancy detection in smart buildings, collision avoidance in robotics and AGVs, in-cabin / exterior sensing in automotive systems, among many others.
Unlike optical or ultrasonic sensors, Hydrogen operates normally regardless of lighting conditions, smoke, dust, fog, or occlusions. It can detect micro-motions such as breathing or subtle gestures, thereby unlocking sensing capabilities that were previously impossible without cameras or wearables.
This is not simply radar detection… it is true environmental intelligence.
Software-defined Radio
Hydrogen is the only UWB chip with programmable centre frequency (6.2–9 GHz), bandwidth (500 MHz–1.8 GHz) and pulses. This extreme flexibility enables complex radar detection systems across worldwide regulations with a single SKU – enabling software adaptation to regional regulations and future spectrum evolution, particularly in response to the ongoing WRC-27 discussions on candidate spectrum allocations for 6G.
Ultra-Low Power
High-performance sensing often comes at the expense of power consumption.
Hydrogen also changes that.
Delivering human presence sensing with <100uW power consumption, the product delivers industry-leading sensing performance at a fraction of the energy required by LiDAR, vision systems, or traditional mmWave radars.
For OEMs and integrators, this means longer operational lifetimes and significantly reduced energy costs without compromising sensing fidelity.
Robustness and Reliability
A sensor is only as valuable as its reliability in the environments where it is deployed.
ARIA Sensing’s Hydrogen 4×4 UWB chip is engineered for harsh operating conditions, with a temperature range of -40°C to +85°C. This makes it suitable for industrial machinery, automotive systems, outdoor infrastructure, and smart building deployments.
Where cameras and optical systems fail in darkness, glare, or visual obstruction, Hydrogen remains fully operational. Unlike mmWave sensors, ARIA’s UWB cmWave technology allows penetration through non-metallic materials, ensuring dependable sensing even when targets are hidden or partially obscured.
This resilience dramatically reduces maintenance requirements, improves system uptime, and provides greater reliability for safety-critical applications.
Hydrogen and Physical AI
Hydrogen extends far beyond sensing hardware. By integrating two RISC-V processors, ARIA Sensing has created a complete edge sensing platform for Physical AI:
On-chip intelligence enables real-time processing, reducing latency, power consumption, system cost and integration complexity. Machine-learning models trained on complex datasets can execute directly on the device, eliminating the need for a host processor in many applications. Hydrogen therefore enables embedded 3D sensing, multi-target tracking and advanced human activity recognition which results in the reduction of system cost, latency and power consumption.
It is not just sensing the environment… it is understanding it instantly.
Physical AI is rapidly emerging across robotics, automation, smart infrastructure and defence. Today, systems rely primarily on image sensors, requiring high-performance processors that increase cost, power consumption and latency. Hydrogen changes this paradigm. It operates either as a standalone sensing platform or as an ultra-low-power companion to cameras, continuously monitoring the environment and activating vision processing only when meaningful events are detected, dramatically reducing overall system power consumption while enabling efficient sensor fusion.
Hydrogen Highlights
Hydrogen UWB SoC stands apart because it solves the fundamental challenges of modern sensing in one IC:
• It is the world’s first 4Tx/4Rx UWB Radar SoC for 3D UWB sensing for richer, more precise environmental awareness
• Programmable bandwidth: 500MHz to 1.8GHz with programmable pulse generation
• Programmable centre frequency: 6.2GHz to 9GHz
• Embedded edge intelligence: dual RISC-V enabling embedded ML algorithms for complex activity and pattern detection, with near-zero-latency decision-making at the edge
• Ultra-low-power: Active sensing current as low as 90mA, enabling human presence detection mode below 100uW with several frames per second
• Single 1.8V power supply
• Industrial operating temperature: -40°C to +85°C
• Flexible host interfaces: UART/SPI/QSPI and GPIOs
• Reliable operation in darkness, smoke, dust and through non-metallic materials simplifying mechanical integration
• Ideal companion to image sensors, enabling sensor fusion while significantly reducing overall system power consumption
• Available across the ARIA Sensing emPulse™ module family with multiple antenna configurations optimized for 2D and high-resolution 3D sensing
While competing technologies force compromises upon design engineers between performance, power, privacy, and durability, Hydrogen 4×4 UWB SoC delivers all four.
This makes this product more than an incremental improvement. It is a transformational sensor platform with the potential to reshape industrial automation, healthcare, smart infrastructure, and automotive safety. It is built to enable Physical AI in next-generation robotics, humanoids and unmanned systems.
Combining breakthrough innovation, robustness, and a differentiated approach to software-defined radar sensing, the Hydrogen 4×4 UWB SoC exemplifies the qualities recognized by the Instrumentation & Electronics Awards. ARIA Sensing is proud to submit its Hydrogen 4×4 UWB SoC for consideration in the “Sensor Product of the Year.”
Hydrogen is not the next step in UWB sensing: it is the new standard.
Entry ID: 7639