TechInsights recently explored and analyzed some of the major Bluetooth and cellular IoT devices on the market that are expected to continue to dominate the IoT market for some time.
Bluetooth 5.0 SoCs are rapidly being adopted by consumer IoT devices such as smartwatches, health and fitness products, etc. Two emerging cellular IoT standards, Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) and Enhanced Machine Type Communication (eMTC), fueled by mobile operators, will also be widely used in smart meters, bicycles and other emerging applications.
IoT devices include some of today's most advanced chips, just as the Internet of Things itself, the underlying technology is also rapidly developing.
According to TechInsight's dismantling and analysis of dozens of IoT devices across a variety of industries, it is clear that Bluetooth will continue to be one of the major technologies used in SoCs. The latest version of Bluetooth 5.0 is rapidly replacing older versions Bluetooth 5.0, released in 2016, quadrupled the transmission range while doubling the transmission rate and increasing SoC data transfer.
Through comparative analysis, the SoCs commonly used in many products include DA14580 from Dialog Semiconductor, nRF52832 from Nordic Semiconductor, and BlueNRG from STMicroelectronics. In general, these SoCs for SoC A single chip includes a combination of CPU core, power management chip (PMIC), memory, and radio frequency (RF) transceiver.
System in Package (SiP) is another solution used in many IoT devices such as Bluetooth SoCs, PMICs, memory and GNSS receivers in Mediatek's MT2523G Bluetooth SiP design. A total package of six chips in a single package.This on-chip high integration and SiP, will continue to promote the future of Bluetooth IOT design SoC
Use the Cellular Internet of Things to locate your bike
The recently released Release 13 release from 3GPP includes two LTE-based IoT technologies, NB-IoT and eMTC, including major global operators such as AT & T, China Mobile, China Unicom and Verizon Have launched the NB-IoT test network or developed related plans NB-IoT is expected to be used in smart cities, public electricity meters and industrial applications.Other emerging application case is in May 2017, Qualcomm announced Plans to work with China Mobile and Mobike The tripartite collaborative test program will use the Qualcomm MDM9206Modem to identify available bikes.
For Ofo's growing bike fleet, smart locks using NB-IoT are among the most prominent cellular IoT applications that use the NB-IoT to eliminate the hassle of keeping consumers stuck while waiting, due to lack of capacity. Telecom pointed out that smart locks using low-power NB-IoT chip means that the battery life will last 8 years to 10 years, which means that in the standard life of Ofo bike cycle, never need to replace the battery.
China Telecom launched the NB-IoT network in May 2017, covering 95% of the country and announced the tariff structure for NB-IoT services in June 2008. The NB-IoT network deployed in 800MHz band provides indoor and outdoor coverage, One base station can support 100,000 devices over 2.5 square kilometers.
Quectel Cellular IoT Module
Analysis of the two Quectel NB-IoT modules, the BG96 and BC95, shows that both use a highly integrated SoC.The BG96 uses the Qualcomm MDM9206 Modem chipset supporting eMTC and NB-IoT and is compatible with Qualcomm's WTR2965 RF Transceiver with the use.
The BC95 module is based on Neul's Modem chip from the British Internet-of-Things company Neul, now part of Huawei's HiSilicon division, after it acquired Neul for $ 25 million in September 2014 The NB-IoT SoC, called the Boudica 120, combines Modem, RF transceivers, PMICs, and memory with 3GPP Release 13 support.
In addition, TechInsights developed an IoT SoC roadmap based on the disassembly analysis of various Bluetooth and Cellular SoCs (Figure 7).
Compile: Susan Hong