By Claus Hetting, WiFi NOW CEO Chairman
This week at Embedded World in Nuremberg, Germany, IoT chipset leader Synaptics is introducing the company’s first ultra-low-power multi-protocol wireless SoC featuring all of Wi-Fi, BLE, and Zigbee/Thread connectivity. The new SoC is part of a wider push into what Synaptics believes to be an emerging US$3.2 billion market. The connectivity chip complements Synaptics new AI-native SR-series MCUs enabling a host of new intelligent use cases, the company says.
The market for ultra-low-power Wi-Fi IoT chipsets is one of the most promising in the Wi-Fi industry and now once again, competition and innovation are ramping up. This week Synaptics launched its bid for ultra-low-power connectivity SoC market share with the introduction of a new family of multi-protocol chipsets. Synaptics says its new SYN461x SoC series – which is an extension of its VerosTM family of smart connectivity solutions – is designed for IoT device AI at the edge and targets wearables, smart watches, speakers, headsets, home appliances, as well as a host of industrial applications.
Single-chip tri-band support, excellent range, and support for Synaptics AstraTM AI-native compute platform for IoT are among its most important features, Synaptics says. The Synaptics Veros brand for Wi-Fi and multi-protocol wireless connectivity was only introduced in October of last year, which means the company is making inroads into the IoT market with cutting-edge SoC solutions at warp speed. Much of Synaptics’ current portfolio of wireless connectivity SoCs are the result of a series of IP licensing agreements with Broadcom, the most recent extension of which was announced last month.
The SYN461x SoC series delivers up to 50 Mbps of data rate across (up to) all three Wi-Fi bands and feature integrated Tx/Rx switch, LNAs, and PAs. This means only a direct antenna connection is required, which simplifies IoT device designs and lowers costs, Synaptics says.
The market for ultra-low-power Wi-Fi IoT is potentially massive and growing for a few reasons: Wi-Fi connectivity is often more useful than Bluetooth because of its longer range and higher bandwidth but its use in battery-powered devices has – until now – been hampered by power constraints. This is now changing with ultra-low-power SoCs such as Synaptics SYN461x series, which typically consumes only milliwatts of power. In some cases this results in years of battery operation for example for sensors, home automation devices, and appliances.
Meanwhile Bluetooth continues to be important to support – for example – device onboarding according to the new Matter IoT standard, which is expected to streamline and foster growth across a highly fragmented global IoT market in coming years. Synaptics SYN461x series also features Zigbee/Thread networking (IEEE 802.15.4) – a requirement for Matter – and incorporates Bluetooth/BLE channel sounding for precise distance measurements as well as LE Audio, Synaptics says.
A platform for multimodal AI at the edge
Perhaps Synaptics’ most compelling competitive edge on the IoT connectivity market is bundling connectivity with the company’s strong focus on low power embedded processors in the form of its AstraTM platform. This includes new adaptive microcontroller units (MCUs) introduced at Embedded World this week – dubbed the SR-series – which is optimised for ‘multimodal’ consumer, enterprise, and industrial Internet of Things (IoT) workloads for context-aware AI at the edge.
Synaptics says that ‘multimodal’ in this case refers to how people interact with the IoT device or – for example – how the device senses its environment via voice, sound, vision, video, touch, motion, and more. The AI processing uses the collected input to ‘learn’ what it is being asked to do and can often predict or anticipate what is needed. This could for example be a laptop that shuts down when it no longer detects a user (or detects an unauthorised user trying to access it) or an alarm system that can detect and distinguish between glass breaking and a baby crying – or perhaps even a camera that can tell the difference between a crawling baby and a pet, Synaptics says.
The small form-factor MCUs are designed for integration into devices such as battery-operated security cameras, sensors, appliances, point-of-sale, digital signage, and scanners. The company’s Machina development kit is the link between the Astra embedded compute platform and the Veros wireless connectivity SoCs.
We’re delighted to announce that Synaptics is our new WiFi NOW IoT partner and will be speaking at the Wi-Fi World Congress in Mountain View on April 28-30. For more information on the event read here. We will be working closely with Synaptics on bringing thought-leading IoT industry content to WiFi NOW readers and followers in the coming year.
/Claus.
