Ericsson Introducing a Trio of New Telecom Industry Products
Communications technology provider Ericsson is rolling out three new products for the Internet of Things market: Smart Metering as a Service, User & IoT Data Analytics Service, and Networks Software 17A for Massive IoT. Smart Metering as a Service is a means by which utility providers can outsource the management of their smart meter network, along with smart meter data collection and analysis, to Ericsson, which will serve as a single point of contact with IT service providers, telecom operators and field services companies. An Ericsson spokesperson says Smart Metering as a Service is communications technology-agnostic, meaning that it will support whatever communications technology makes sense for any given customer. The service will be made available during the second quarter of 2016.
Ericsson’s User & IoT Data Analytics Service provides telecommunications companies with a real-time analytics engine, built on Ericsson’s User Data Consolidation (UDC) service, which provides an IoT subscription database management service. The analytics service will work with data from both cellular and non-cellular devices, Ericsson says, and can be used to collect data from other vendors’ databases and aggregate it in the analysis engine. The service is designed to help IoT network operators improve operational efficiency, and is expected to become available in mid-2016.
Lastly, Ericsson says that during the fourth quarter of this year, it will launch Networks Software 17A for Massive IoT for its customers in the mobile network operations sector. The software will enable these companies to “leverage the coverage, reliability and security of their current network infrastructure to support a massive growth in IoT devices, and diverse use cases, with no added hardware,” according to the Ericsson spokesperson. These use cases could include managing data from consumer wearables, for example, or any number of industrial, smart-city or agricultural applications.
Sensoria Announces New Sensor Product, Integration Kit
Sensoria, a maker of sensor-enabled socks, has announced a new, upgraded sensor module, an updated Web dashboard and mobile app, and a Sensoria Development Kit for third-party integration.
Sensoria’s socks, its flagship product, use sensors integrated into the fabric to measure footfall pressure, such as striking down on the heel rather than landing on the ball of the foot, which may cause injury over time. Used with a MEMS sensor containing an accelerometer and a gyroscope module, integrated into an anklet form factor, it could also track a runner’s cadence and speed.
The Sensoria Core replaces Sensoria’s earlier anklet sensor unit. Like the earlier device, it transmits collected data to a user’s smartphone via a Bluetooth connection. But the Sensoria Core is half the weight and size of the anklet, while providing approximately twice the battery life. It also includes onboard storage, enabling users to collect data without requiring that they carry their smartphone with them during their runs.
The Sensoria Web dashboard and smartphone app are designed to alert runners (either during their run as they carry their phones, or later via the dashboard) who tend to heel-strike, and to coach them toward landing more in the center of their feet. The recent upgrades to the app provide users who also wear Bluetooth-enabled heart-rate monitors to integrate their heart-rate data. Based on this, the app and dashboard provide personalized training advice based on a user’s heart rate and heart rate variability. The updated Web dashboard also provides user trend analysis.
Sensoria’s new developer kit enables third parties to integrate the Sensoria Core sensor and the software used to collect data from and manage the sensor into their own products.
Report Says Sensor Makers Must Focus on Power Consumption
In a new report, market research firm Lux Research finds that sensor manufacturers will need to improve four key areas—power requirements, sensitivity, form factor and cost—of the products they produce, in order to meet projections for the Internet of Things market between now and 2020. Cisco, for example, forecasts that by the end of the decade, 50 billion connected devices, each containing multiple sensors, will be in use.
Tiffany Huang, a Lux Research associate and the lead author of the report “Identifying Key Sensor Innovations Solving Unmet Needs,” says the four pathways to improving sensor performance will be to focus on the most power-efficient processor and communication protocols, to develop energy harvesting-techniques that reduce reliance on battery power, to improve sensor component integration or packaging in order to decrease the size of finished sensor modules, and to investigate new types of sensors beyond the capacitive sensors that are currently common.
The report calls out SureCore, Ineda and Ambiq Micro for best sensor power performance; Ineda and GainSpan for their achievements in decreasing power consumption when devices are not in active use; and Ambiq and PsiKick for cutting power use by operating on lower-than-normal voltages. It highlights Motion Engine, mCube, Amkor, Bosch and Standing Egg for making improvements in sensor packaging. And for innovations in sensor types, it points to Xarion, Vesper and Next Biometrics for their development of optical, piezoelectric and thermal sensor designs.
The report is available as part of the Lux Research Sensors Intelligence service. Contact Lux Research for pricing.
ZigBee Alliance and Thread Deepen Standards Collaboration
In other IoT standardization news, last week the ZigBee Alliance and Thread Group announced a new step in their efforts to streamline their disparate technology standards. The ZigBee Alliance, a nonprofit industry organization that sets communication and interoperability standards for sensors compliant with the IEEE 802.15.4 standard, and the Thread Group, an industry group that last summer introduced the Thread 6LoWPAN-based mesh-networking standard, say they are developing an end-to-end solution for IP-based IoT networks. The new solution will combine the Thread Group’s Internet Protocol (IP) networking layer with the ZigBee Alliance’s Common Applications Library.
“Members will be able to leverage their investments in ZigBee technology across new applications and more homes and businesses,” says Mark Walters, the ZigBee Alliance’s VP of strategic development, “expanding their market opportunities as the Alliance continues to broaden its portfolio and drive industry-wide standards unification opportunities for the IoT.
The two groups announced plans in April 2015 to enable ZigBee products to run Thread’s mesh-network protocol via the ZigBee Cluster Library application layer. The Alliance says that integration will be completed by the end of this year. The groups’ plan to co develop an end-to-end solution for IP-based IoT networks will expand on that collaboration by offering two complete bottom-to-top solutions that share a common IEEE 802.15.4 radio platform and a common ZigBee Consolidated Applications Library. However, Walters says, while some specific ZigBee application standards, such as Home Automation and Light Link, use the same IEEE 802.15.4 physical and media access-control layer as the Thread protocol, it is unlikely that manufacturers will offer products that support both the ZigBee PRO mesh-networking protocol and the Thread mesh-networking protocol. “We expect a decision regarding which solution to use will be made by the product manufacturer at the time of product creation,” he states, “and not by the end consumer in the field.”
Chipmaker RFaxis Grows Product Offerings for IoT Market
RFaxis, a fabless semiconductor firm based in Irvine, Calif., has added three RF front-end integrated circuits to its family of RFeIC products for the sub-GHz and 2.4 GHz frequency bands. The RFX2403, RFX2413 and RFX1030 chips are targeted at the global IoT or machine-to-machine (M2M) market.
The RFX2403 includes transmit-receive switching circuitry required for devices compliant with the 802.15.4 ZigBee/Thread protocol, as well as proprietary ISM radios in the 2.4 GHz spectrum. The chip can also be used in devices that support the Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) standard.
RFaxis says the RFX2413 is optimized for us in sub-GHz 802.15.14 and proprietary ISM radios, such as LoRa, Sigfox and Weightless, and Narrowband Cellular IoT (NB-CIoT) specifications. All three new products come with associated matching networks, RF decoupling and harmonic filters, in a single-die, single-chip, bulk CMOS device in miniature QFN packages measuring 3 millimeters by 3 millimeters (0.1 inch by 0.1 inch). According to the company, all three products are operable at an ambient temperature of up to 125 degrees Celsius (257 degrees Fahrenheit), which is required by most uses in LED lighting and in smart-home, -office and -building applications.
Samples of the new products will be available during this quarter, according to the company.
Gimbal, Couchbase, Partner for Beacon Apps
Database provider Couchbase and Bluetooth beacon manufacturer Gimbal have collaborated to develop a means by which Couchbase customers can create mobile applications that cache data on a consumer’s phone, which can be useful when a consumer is in a location with poor cellular connectivity. For example, in a sports stadium, airport or festival space, the developer could establish a beacon-based geofence or configure specific beacons that would trigger cached content on consumers’ phones to be used in a push notification to those consumers.