Innovative Multi-Band Solutions
In order to meet the demands of current and future IoT and communications requirements of embedded devices, higher integration and lower power are driving innovative multi-band radio solutions and processors on a single die.
In addition, there are many wireless protocols and physical layers to select from depending on the application at hand.
Software-defined radio systems, comprising wideband RF sections and software demodulation, are allowing adaptable radio systems that support many different protocols with the same hardware.
These systems also can support multiple security and encryption frameworks, allowing changes in security and modulation using software only. Some of the lower-cost integrated systems are starting to support sampling at the baseband level, and exposing that to the system, creating adaptable software demodulation possibilities.
Recently, there has been a number of semiconductor vendors offering embedded processors, SubG and BLE radios on the same die. These solutions allow for great flexibility in communicating with a broad range of license-free SubG devices as well as providing BLE functionality to a mobile device or providing gateway functionality, from SubG to BLE to a router upload to an IOT server infrastructure.
The next wave of devices will most likely include SubG, BLE, and Wi-Fi, both 2.4G and 5G, significantly increasing the capability of embedded devices.
Very wideband RF front ends combined with wideband analog to digital converters are decreasing in price and power requirements. These systems currently form the backbone of LTE and mobile communications, as well as multiple protocol, military, and satellite systems.
As high-speed sampling systems decrease in both price and power, it is expected that software-defined radio will become a major part of even low powered embedded devices. The possibility of a single device allowing LTE-M, NB-IoT, Wi-Fi, BLE, and multiple SubG protocols will soon be a reality.
As highly integrated software-defined radios get introduced, expect to see new protocols based on intelligent spectrum management getting introduced to the market. Since most gateways have access to a central server, the Server and the Gateway can participate in managing the embedded devices spectrum usage, for optimization of the spectrum, band width and concurrent use of that spectrum.
Cognitive Radio and aspects of 5G are designed around spectrum optimization and usage, requiring multi-band adaptive radio systems, and multiple protocol support. These systems will soon become available for embedded devices and IoT devices, allowing the possibility of long-range SubG sensor uploads, as well as wideband connections when needed.
For instance, a low power deployed sensor system or medical device, can use the low power wide area network for periodic status checks and data transfers, enabling a wideband component such as LTR-M, or full LTE when needed. This allows long battery life and status monitoring during deployment, while also allowing wide band intermittent communication for critical events when the wide band network is available.
