Ofcom Seeks to Clarify Spectrum Use for IoT
Ofcom, the United Kingdom’s communications regulator, has allocated 10 megahertz of VHF spectrum—the 55 to 68 MHz, 70.5 to 71.5 MHz and 80.5 to 81.5 MHz bands—for a new licensing product designed to enable communications for Internet of Things or machine-to-machine (M2M) devices to connect wirelessly over long distances, such as in rural settings.
Last fall, the regulator began an examination of “the suitability of these VHF bands for delivering IoT services in remote and rural areas, and to assess whether wider exploitation of these frequencies could be accommodated without affecting existing spectrum users,” according to a Mar. 23 Ofcom report. It concluded that the other users of the spectrum would not be adversely impacted by such use cases. Further, the report found no evidence that Ofcom’s existing business radio licensing products could not support IoT or M2M applications in the VHF spectrum. However, concerned that its stakeholders “might not recognize that,” Ofcom decided it will launch a new business radio product that will replace all of its current offerings but still support all legacy use cases. “In concert with this measure we will also launch a dedicated information and application web page for those seeking spectrum access for the IoT. We believe these measures will help make it clear to stakeholders which spectrum is currently available to facilitate IoT,” the report says.
According to Ofcom, the UK already hosts 40 million connected devices. This number is forecast to grow more than eight-fold by 2022, with hundreds of millions of devices carrying out more than a billion daily data transactions.
Silver Spring Networks, Rongwen Collaborate on Smart Lighting Systems
Silver Spring Networks, a provider of wireless networking systems used for advanced utility-metering and smart-city applications, is partnering with Rongwen, which sells LED street lighting systems, to sell their services into the China market. Rongwen, which has installed more than 250,000 controllable LED street lights in China, will integrate Silver Spring’s IPv6-based networking platform into its offerings in order to deliver lighting products as part of smart-city initiatives, such as environmental sensing, energy savings and road-monitoring applications in China, which has the largest street lighting market in Asia.
The two companies are offering their combined services under the Energy Performance Contracting (EPC) financing model, wherein cost savings from reduced energy consumption is used to repay the cost of installing energy conservation measures.
Cypress Semiconductor Offering Long-range Bluetooth Module
Cypress Semiconductor last week announced a Bluetooth Low Energy module that is says supports a read range of up to 400 meters, eight times that of current Bluetooth solutions. According to the company, in order to achieve the longer read range the new EZ-BLE programmable system on a chip (PSoC) XT/XR module integrates a power amplifier that boosts the output transmit power of the device to +9.5dBm and a low noise amplifier that improves the receive sensitivity to -95dBm. The longer range does come with higher energy consumption. While the standard Bluetooth Low Energy modules that Cypress manufactures consume 18.1 uA and 6.25 uA at 1- and 4-second connection intervals, respectively, the long-range XT/XR module consumes 27.3 uA and 9 uA at the same respective intervals. Cypress is targeting the new module toward home automation, industrial and smart city applications.
Sigfox Gains New French Telecom Partner
French telecommunications provider SFR—a subsidiary of Altice N.V., which owns telecommunications and media companies in Western Europe, the United States, the French Caribbean and Israel—is partnering with Sigfox to grow its low-power, long-range Internet of Things network footprint in France and internationally, as a complement to the companies’ telecommunications services.
Sigfox, a French company, has already deployed enough of its receivers in France to provide coverage to 92 percent of that’s country’s population. SFR’s clients will be able to access the network to support IoT applications that do not require the high bandwidth delivered by SFR’s 4G or Wi-Fi services. Sigfox says communications modules compliant with the Sigfox network are now available for 100 devices, including utility meters, defibrillators and GPS trackers.
Sigfox has established its network throughout 14 countries and plans to increase that number to 30 by year’s end.
New Plug-and-Play NFC Modules from Infineon
Chipmaker Infineon Technologies has launched a new series of modules compliant with the Near Field Communication (NFC) protocol, in collaboration with Mobile Payment Solutions (MPS), a Beijing-based company specializing in ultra-small antenna-in-package designs. The modules are designed for easy integration into wearable devices, such as wristbands, or payment fobs. By bundling Infineon’s chip with its NFC antenna components, the modules eliminate the need for a separate NFC controller and allow the components to be built on a PCB footprint as small as 4 millimeters by 4 millimeters (0.16 inch by 0.16 inch). The modules include Infineon’s SLE78 security chip, which features a storage capacity of more than 1 megabyte—sufficient memory to store user credentials and run multiple applications. This enables a single device, such as an NFC-enabled wristband, to replace a variety of cards, such as payment cards, public transport tickets and online payment tokens.
Plataine and Argosy International Bringing Industrial IoT solution to Asia Pacific
Plataine, a provider of automation software, and Argosy International, which supplies composite materials and specialty chemicals to the aerospace industry, have signed a cooperative agreement to bring their combined services and product offerings to the Asia Pacific region, with the aim of helping aerospace OEMs, airlines, and overhaul and maintenance shops to increase manufacturing efficiencies and innovation in composite components.
Plataine’s Total Production Optimization (TPO) solution allows manufacturers to track assets, raw materials, work-in-process kits, tools, components and finished products, using sensor networks and proprietary software. The TPO software is designed to help factory managers gain visibility into their production process, generate alerts based on predictive models, and make changes to the production process in real time. In doing so, TPO creates digital records for each component and product coming off the manufacturing line, which is used for compliance audits, as well as for quality-control functions.