Qualcomm aims to improve IoT networks with Mesh Networking Platform

Chipset giant Qualcomm has unveiled its Mesh Networking Platform which aims to serve as a reference design for OEMs and broadband carriers to improve the connected home experience for end consumers.

“Qualcomm Technologies helped create a new category of mesh networks that are transforming in-home connectivity,” said Gopi Sirineni, vice president, product management, Qualcomm. “With our new Qualcomm Mesh Networking Platform, we are building upon that foundation to accelerate the next generation of mesh systems to further enhance connected services in the home.”

The platform is based on Qualcomm IPQ40x8/9 network system-on-chip which is utilised in most mesh networking products today. Devices based on the Mesh Networking Platform will deliver stable connectivity around the home, voice control, centralised security, and carrier-grade mesh networking features, according to Qualcomm.

“New capabilities like voice assistance and IoT radio integration will not only transform consumer experiences at home, but along with carrier-grade feature enhancements, make it easier for our customers to adopt and deploy mesh systems aligned to how people want their networks to perform,” continues Sirineni.

The Qualcomm Mesh Networking Platform includes:

  • Qualcomm® Wi-Fi Self-Organizing (SON) feature suite serves as one of the first collection of SON features designed to ensure corner-to-corner Wi-Fi coverage, easy set-up, automatic management and traffic optimization with near-zero user intervention, as well as additional security safeguards.

  • Carrier-Grade features are designed to make it easier for carriers to enhance their broadband services with Wi-Fi SON, making application programming interfaces (APIs) available for easier porting of SON on to other silicon platforms. Qualcomm Technologies is also enabling software features, such as cloud-based diagnostics to enable remote monitoring, diagnostics, and analytics for troubleshooting.

  • Integrated voice capabilities allow consumers to control and interact with devices on their network using their voice. The Qualcomm Mesh Networking Platform can support a built-in microphone array and speaker, voice recognition software, and supports APIs to the most popular cloud-based assistant applications.

  • Backhaul flexibility offers a variety of backhaul options that can be used to maximize the performance of mesh networks, including 802.11ac, 802.11ad, 802.11ax, or Powerline technologies.

  • Qualcomm® IoT Connectivity Feature Suite is designed to help ensure compatible and simultaneous use of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, CSRmesh™ connectivity, and 802.15.4-based technologies across a network, while also supporting previously announced communication protocols, cloud services, and software frameworks. This allows it to act as a universal translator of diverse connectivity technologies and ecosystems, to minimize complexity and ease fragmentation challenges for manufacturers, developers, and consumers.

  • Qualcomm Mesh Networking Reference Design offers manufacturers an expedient path for the commercialization of next-generation networking products with cutting-edge features. This allows for completely new avenues of differentiation and business partnerships for OEMs, cloud providers and the IoT client/device ecosystem by centralizing the connectivity and control mechanics into the network.

ZigBee is one ‘802.15.4-based’ technology which is supported as part of the reference design to allow a greater number of smart home devices to interact without the need for an IP bridge in the middle. Since both ZigBee and Bluetooth operate in the 2.4GHz band, Qualcomm added interference mitigation to the board design to prevent impacting the performance of the Wi-Fi sub-system.

Source: www.iottechnews.com

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