Freescale takes the broad view of IoT/M2M
It should therefore be no surprise that Freescale is eager to help develop this nascent market, said Iain Davidson, the company’s marketing manager for networking.
And with its product base ranging from MEMS to networking via RF Freescale has an opportunity to bring some order to the fragmented IoT/M2M market. Freescale has put down its marker with the Kinetis-W range of microcontrollers, which integrate sub-1 GHz and 2.4 GHz RF transceivers that use IEEE 802.11.4 with a proprietary protocol or ZigBee with ARM-based microcontrollers.
Some applications will want to piggyback off established cellular communications networks, some off Wi-Fi. For others that is not possible. "We have IEEE 802.15.4 and ZigBee, but ZigBee does not have long range."
Davidson makes the point the IoT/M2M is fragmented for good reason with thousands of applications and use cases driving the setting of specifications together with multiple wireless and wired communications technologies. Freescale often achieves success by bundling products from across its business divisions, he said. "It can be sensors together with gateway processors and even cloud-based software and services. We are not about to try and force-fit some sort of universal solution," he added.
Davidson said he expects most applications to be developed along a two-tiered arrangement with a local network connecting wireless nodes to a hub and then WiFi or 3G/4G cellular communications aggregating data and control information and sending it to and from the "cloud."
Iain Davidson, marketing manager for networking at Freescale.
With the integration of multiple sensor types together with a wireless modem and application processor the mobile phone is not only an enabling hub for IoT/M2M networks but could also be predecessor of – and test bed for – highly-integrated wireless sensor nodes. Freescale is no longer heavily involved in the development of silicon for mobile phone handsets so does that put the company at a disadvantage?
Davidson acknowledged that customers may have preferred modem suppliers. Sometimes Freescale can work with the likes of Qualcomm Atheros and Broadcom, and sometimes it may find itself in competition with them. "The mobile phone may be a hub for networks around the human body, perhaps based on medical and well-being applications. But the same networking can be seen in other locations and at different scales and based on different protocols; so around domestic buildings, industrial plant, and transport networks. It is often still focused on an M2M gateway that bridges between a backhaul pipe and a local network," he said.
And automotive, a sector where Freescale is leading component supplier, could be one that is key for the proliferation of the IoT/M2M. There are numerous use cases around car-to-car and car-to-infrastructure communications and as a mature market with relative few major vehicle manufacturers fragmentation is low and standards more easily set. Davidson again argues that a two-tier structure is likely with LTE communications being used from car-to-cloud but dedicated short-range communications (DSRC) IEEE802.11p being used for local communications.
And what is the one technology that is driving Freescale and its involvement in IoT/M2M? Davidson reckons its security. With the prospect of billions of autonomous nodes connecting to the Internet and that connectedness being fundamental companies need to know that data and software applications will not be stolen.
So is the market racing towards 50 billion connected IoT nodes by 2020, as has been previously predicted? Davidson does not get too concerned about such large numbers knowing that there is much uncertainty about how you define and measure the market. "What I see is a collection of existing markets with growth and new markets that are being enabled by the reducing cost of connectivity," he said.
Freescale has organized a one-day industry conference on IoT/M2M to take place in East Kilbride, near Glasgow, on Oct. 31. The goal is present applications, technologies and business opportunities that are emerging as drivers for IoT. Presenting organizations are scheduled to include O2 Telefonica, IBM, the National Health Service, plus companies involved in whitespace communications, power distribution and sensor technology.
Related links and articles:
https://m2mfreescale2013.eventbrite.com/
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