Semtech: New Gothenburg Network and End-Node Location Tracking
Swedish telecom operator Tele2 will launch an Internet of Things network in Gothenburg, Sweden, to support a range of smart-city, asset-tracking, environmental-monitoring and public-transportation applications, according to Semtech, whose LoRa-based low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) radios will be used to build the network. TalkPool, a Tele2 affiliate that has developed IoT networks and related services in many markets worldwide, is also partnering to establish the network, which is expected to go live before the end of the year.
Semtech has also announced, at this week’s Mobile World Congress in Shanghai, that its LoRa wireless RF solution can now figure out the location of LoRa sensors, without the use of GPS. The function is enabled in Semtech’s second-generation LoRaWAN gateways, which will use differential time of arrival (DTOA) algorithms to determine a LoRa sensor’s position to the nearest block of the city in which that sensor is located, based on an ultra-high-resolution timestamp in each LoRa data packet the gateway receives. Semtech has enabled its solution to provide the location of LoRa sensors because some end users are interested in knowing the slocation of the mobile assets to which they add LoRa sensors. Until now, location tracking required the addition of a GPS receiver, which both increases sensor cost and reduces battery life.
PARC Launches Condition Based Maintenance Platform
PARC, a Xerox-owned technology-development company, has launched a platform to enable companies to monitor the health, safety and performance of their equipment. Called the Condition Based Maintenance (CBM) platform, it is a suite of software and hardware products that collect data from sensors and other sources and then process that information using such tools as machine diagnostics, machine learning and predictive analytics. PARC is working with a wide range of organizations to implement the CBM platform, it reports, including East Japan Railway, BAE Systems, General Motors, Hitachi, LG Chem Power, IHI and Xerox.
“Our team works with organizations to transition from scheduled-based maintenance to condition-based maintenances,” says Ajay Raghavan, PARC Research’s area manager. “Algorithms tell them when something is going to fail in, say, a week—rather than having plant managers being woken up in the middle of the night to fix something that might cost millions of dollars to fix.”
PARC attaches low-cost sensors onto equipment, ranging from manufacturing systems to electronic tolling infrastructure to railyard equipment, to directly monitor system state. CBM is a model-based approach, PARC explains, enabling higher than 90 percent accuracy and negligible false-alarm rates, and arming its customers with actionable data for informed deployment.
Ayla Networks Raises Big Round C, Eyes Asian Market
Ayla Networks, a Silicon Valley IoT platform provider, has raised $39 million in its Series C financing round, bringing its total funds raised to date to nearly $65 million. Ants Capital, a boutique investment bank and asset-management company with headquarters in China, co-led the investment, along with 3NOD, an original design manufacturer (ODM) of lifestyle products. New investors Mitsui and Acorn Pacific contributed to the funding, as did existing Ayla investors Cisco Investments, Crosslink Capital, International Finance Corp. (a division of World Bank Group), Linear Venture, SAIF Partners/Oriza Ventures, SJF Ventures and Voyager Capital.
Ayla Networks, which last year launched Insights, a service that provides product manufacturers with information regarding how consumers are using smart-home products linked to the Ayla Network, has expanded into the Chinese market. In fact, Ayla Networks claims it is the only international IoT platform provider to have been granted a license to serve as an internet content provider in the People’s Republic of China. The firm has integrated its platform with Chinese messaging network WeChat, enabling Chinese consumers to use a single WeChat sign-in to control multiple smart-home, smart-health and other IoT lifestyle products from a single app.
Ayla Networks, which has more than doubled its employee headcount in the past year, will use the funding to continue its growth.
STMicroelectronics Releasing Bluetooth System-on-Chip
Chipmaker STMicroelectronics has introduced its first Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) wireless system-on-chip (SoC), known as the BlueNRG-1. The company says the chip is designed for high-volume applications, such as wearables, retail beacons, keyless entry systems, smart remote controllers, asset trackers, and industrial and medical monitors. It includes a dedicated digital-microphone input that simplifies voice-enabled applications and a maximum operating temperature of 105 degrees Celsius (221 degrees Fahrenheit), suitable for smart-lighting and automotive applications (such as onboard-diagnostic devices or passive-entry-passive-start, which uses Bluetooth radios in a key fob and within a vehicle to both unlock a vehicle and allow for push-button ignition when the driver is carrying the fob). It supports the latest BLE specification, version 4.2. The BlueNRG-1 is scheduled to enter volume production in late July 2016 in two format options: the QFN-32 package, with a footprint of 5 millimaters by 5 millimeters (0.2 inch by 0.2 inch), will sell for $1.50 apiece at volume, and the smaller WLCSP-34, with a footprint of 2.7 millimeters by 2.6 millimeters (2.1 inch by 2.1 inch), for $1.45 at volume.
ABI Research anticipates that shipments of IoT products that support Bluetooth Low Energy will show a compound annual growth rate of 34 percent by 2021, reaching close to 1.4 billion units.
Cisco Enters Low-Power Wide-Area Network Fray
Networking giant Cisco announced this week that it is releasing a low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) modem designed to enable its 809 and 829 industrial routers to interface with LoRa-based LPWAN nodes. The system is fully compatible with the version 2 LoRa gateway and with Actility‘s Thingpark LoRa Network Server, and operates in the unlicensed ISM band: 863 to 870 MHz in Europe and 902 to 928 MHz in North America. The modem supports bidirectional communication, chirp modulation, multiple spreading factors, an adaptive data rate from 300 bps to 5.5 kbps, and up to 15 kilometers single hop in rural from the end device to the LoRaWAN Gateway.
The Cisco 809 and 829 are Ethernet and 4G/LTE cellular industrial routers designed for remote deployment in various industries, or to enable wireless local area networks.