Semtech joins with Freescale and Nissin to offer Wi-SUN Solution

Semtech Corp. today announced it has joined with other members of the Wi-SUN Alliance™ to produce a radio frequency (RF) development platform targeting advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) and industrial applications. The development platform includes Semtech's SX1276 Wi-SUN compliant RF transceiver that features its long-range LoRa™ technology, combined with a Kinetis® microcontroller (MCU) from Freescale Semiconductor, Inc.. The Wi-SUN ready software stack is provided by Nissin Systems Co., Ltd. , a contributor member of Wi-SUN.

“As an active member of the Wi-SUN Alliance™, Semtech is promoting not only its RF chips, but also the availability of a ready-to-integrate solution targeting the Japanese AMI market,” says Marc Pegulu, Vice President of Marketing for Semtech’s wireless sensing and timing business unit. “For the first time, a Wi-SUN ready platform, including RF transceiver, MCU and software stack is made available to industrial customers building Japan’s metering infrastructure.”

The Semtech SX1276, a Wi-SUN ready, LoRa-based transceiver with a 168db link budget for maximum range, constitutes the wireless portion of the solution. The LoRaâ„¢ long-range technology, combined with the Nissin software stack enables customers to reduce infrastructure cost and improve quality of service.

“Thanks to its low-power characteristics, on-chip analog and security integration, as well as scalability across a wide memory footprint, the Freescale Kinetis MCU architecture is particularly suited for AMI and currently used in many metering applications,” said Emmanuel Sambuis, Director for IoT & Connectivity at Freescale Microcontrollers. “When used in conjunction with Nissin software and the Semtech transceiver, Kinetis MCUs offer Freescale customers the best possible combination for performance, cost and time to market. Freescale is extremely proud to deliver a new hardware and software solution that will help deploy a complete smart meter infrastructure across Japan in the coming years.”

Nissin builds on 25 years of experience in software development and proven metering experience making it a key element in delivering a complete Wi-SUN ready software stack running on a Freescale MCU and Semtech RF. Nissin is now positioned to be a key player in the Japan AMI market. Availability of the solution will greatly reduce cost and development time of Nissin customers.

Toshiaki Ishikura, Executive Officer of Solution Business, Nissin Systems Co., Ltd. sees a great opportunity in this solution: "This project is a very attractive solution to the customer of IoT markets, including HEMS of Japan. Our platform would contribute to dramatically faster time to market for a customer's product development."