This dataset identifies 937 patent families published between 2015 and mid-2026 that match ultra-wideband, UWB ranging and short-range wireless search criteria combined with time-of-flight, angle-of-arrival, power consumption, multipath resolution and secure ranging terms. Families are the more reliable unit than raw document counts because they collapse continuations and multi-jurisdiction copies of the same invention into one entry. The true figure for the most recent year is understated because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months.

No, filings peaked in 2022 at 108 families and have declined since, following growth from 35 families in 2017. That shape suggests the core claim space around ranging protocols and power management has already been substantially staked out. Recent-year momentum data for the most active assignees confirms this: several show flat or double-digit negative year-on-year change, including one major filer down 25%.

H04B (transmission, general) and H04W (wireless communication networks) are the two largest IPC subclasses in this corpus, at 571 and 526 records respectively, each covering well over half of all filings. G01S (radar, sonar and positioning) trails at 189, and H04L (digital information transmission) sits at 277. Antenna-specific claims under H01Q are comparatively rare at 46, suggesting hardware-layer antenna innovation is a smaller share of current activity than protocol and network-layer work.

US20230266431A1, assigned to Qorvo, claims a method for a UWB-equipped device to adjust its ranging time interval based on prior location measurements, effectively skipping ranging rounds to conserve power. Anyone implementing adaptive ranging-interval logic tied to observed device movement should review its claim scope closely, since it sits directly in a power-saving technique that is likely to recur across mobile and wearable UWB products. Designing around it typically means using a different trigger for interval adjustment, such as a fixed schedule, an external sensor input, or a threshold not based on the same location-measurement history.

Based on the IPC composition, secure ranging against relay and distance-fraud attacks, angle-of-arrival antenna calibration, and multi-device ranging-round coexistence all carry markedly fewer records than the dominant H04B and H04W transmission and network classes. These branches sit adjacent to a dense core rather than outside it, so a first claim there needs to be drafted narrowly against the specific gap rather than broadly against UWB ranging as a whole. Co-assignee data also shows very little cross-company collaboration in this space, which can mean fewer blocking joint patents to navigate around.