Recognize signal tampering
Keyless car theft, which captures and mimics your key’s signal to open your car, is still a problem. Numerous car manufacturers are already working on ways to suppress this and Volvo is also doing its part.
Very handy when boarding, that keyless entry, but the downside is that it is still not completely watertight in terms of security. Car thieves can pick up the signal when you make contact with the car and then later send that signal to the car themselves to open it. Volvo may have a solution to find out if the signal is coming from the key or from somewhere else. This method of theft must therefore be suppressed.
The American CarBuzz a patent from Volvo turned up at the American patent bank USPTO and investigated the operation of the system. In short, it works as follows: the car sends two signals after a request signal arrives to open the vehicle. The first signal goes via Bluetooth to the car key and back, then the second (acoustic) signal goes to the source of the request and back. After this, the car is able to compare the two ‘paths’ of the signals and discover if the key is in the same place as the source of the request. If not, the car will refuse to open. Both the distance and angle of the signal would be identifiable.
It sounds like an effective solution. The question now is whether and when Volvo will apply it and whether, just like with the three-point belt, it will also release this patent for safety reasons.
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– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl