Arm wireless business general manager Paul Williamson talks about the acquisition of Mistbase and NextG-Com to bring industry-leading NB-IoT compliant technology to Arm-based chips
The billions of connected devices making up the Internet of Things (IoT) will serve a huge range of application needs. From single-sensor devices regulating and monitoring factory production flows to intelligence stitched into a city’s arteries to tune streetlights to the presence of people, vehicle traffic and weather conditions. Despite the incredible range of use cases there are two non-negotiable elements that must be architected into the system’s heart – security and low power. Security because the system must be trusted, low power because energy equals cost.
Last summer the industry had a breakthrough moment on both fronts when NarrowBand-IoT (NB-IoT), a new low power wide area connectivity standard, was approved. It is seen as the standard that will unlock long range IoT connectivity at scale as mobile network operators only have to upgrade their existing LTE systems to make it work. The standard will be cost-efficient to adopt, it will allow data to be sent over hundreds of miles at ultra-low-power, and it opens up the chance to tie in market-leading chip security technologies from Arm.
The question for me in leading Arm’s wireless business was how to move quickly to enable our partners to design NB-IoT compliant products. This week we made significant progress on that by acquiring Mistbase and NextG-Com for their specialist engineering expertise in software and hardware IP that meets the new NB-IoT standard.
NB-IoT Arm-based chips
We are already working on Arm Cordio-N solutions to reduce the time to market for our partners’ NB-IoT standard-compliant chips. In addition to the hardware and software expertise of the acquired companies, we are also investing in radio design that will offer complete NB-IoT chip solutions from application software to antenna. This will cut the complexity of adopting cellular IoT technology.
In enabling NB-IoT compatibility, we will save the industry years of development effort and improve access for developers by reducing the time it takes to get products approved by standards bodies and network operators. Our NB-IoT IP also complements Arm’s broader product portfolio, making it easy for partners to take advantage of our security and Arm mbed Cloud capabilities. Combining Arm NB-IoT IP with secure cloud connectivity will allow Arm’s chip partners to create industry-leading products that tie into an end-to-end security system.
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