Socionext, ZiFiSense and Techsor has developed the SC1330A LSI for IoT tag. The low cost LPWAN 2.0 LSI is claimed to be the industry’s first Advanced M-FSK LSI designed exclusively for upstream transmission. It supports sub-GHz ISM bands such as 418 to 510MHz and 815 to 930MHz. It features low power consumption, long distance transmission and high-speed mobile communications, for smart IoT applications such as environmental monitoring, logistics tracking, asset management, and automated meter reading.
Unlike devices such as those based on NB-IoT (Narrow Band-IoT) and LoRa, the Advanced M-FSK in the SC1330A supports uni-directional upstream transmission, because environmental monitoring, logistics tracking, asset management and automated meter reading often do not require downstream communications. Solely upstream transmission reduces costs and power consumption, explained Socionext. The SC1330A also has a carrier sense function that detects the presence of radio waves in specific frequency bands to prevent interference with other communication devices.
The IoT tag integrates a 32-bit RISC-V core, GPIO, I2C, SPI, UART and external interrupt interfaces and signal processing units in a single device. It is mounted in a 4.0 x 4.0mm QFN 24 package using high frequency signal processing and packaging technologies to reduce bill of materials costs, total IoT footprint and power consumption.
The SC1330A can be used in a range of cost-sensitive applications including consumer goods, asset management, and logistics tracking.
Compared with other LPWA systems, the energy efficient SC1330A consumes approximately 20mA when transmitting at 10mW (10dBm), said Socionext. It achieves a communication speed of one kbits per second at a distance of around three to 5.0km. The tag can also incorporate paper and coin batteries for extended life. For low-frequency communications applications, such as readings from smart meters and large-scale devices asset management, the SC1330A features up to 10 years of life expectancy.
Mass production will begin in calendar Q4 of 2022. The SC1330A can support a variety of protocols, it will be able to expand LPWAN world.
Socionext supplies SoCs for automotive, data center, networking and smart devices market sectors. Socionext is headquartered in Yokohama, and has offices in Japan, Asia, United States and Europe.
ZiFiSense was founded in 2013 in Cambridge, UK. It provides low power IoT and wireless technologies and advocates the LPWA ZETA standard and use ZETA technology in smart buildings, logistics and factories.
Techsor is a start-up company established in October 2016 and the sole distributor in Japan for ZETA technologies and products. It is also a founding member of the ZETA Alliance. In collaboration with alliance companies, Techsor is promoting digital transformation such as smart building, smart agriculture, smart logistics, and smart health care using IoT technologies.
