Enabling IoT Connectivity with STM32 Wireless Ecosystem
Wireless technologies have been here for decades now and there are multiple technologies available.
STMicroelectronics had recently organized GPM-Wireless India Media Briefing where the key focus was placed on the wireless connectivity and security features of STM32 product families. The briefing was addressed by Olivier Lardy, Senior Marketing Manager-Wireless, Asia Pacific & Mohit Arora, GPM Wireless Marketing Manager. Pradyumna Kumar Jena, Field Applications Manager for GPM Wireless was also present to showcase the practical applications of these products.
Extracting the key highlights of the media briefing on GPM Wireless connectivity, here’s a quick look on the presentations discussed that included, enabling IoT and connectivity with STM32 wireless solutions, asset tracking, IoT security, wireless protocols, ST’s leadership in wireless connectivity and so much more.
Wireless Connectivity – An IoT Enabler & its Market Landscape
Wireless technologies have been here for decades now and there are multiple technologies available. All of us have access in our home to devices using wireless technologies and most industries are using wireless technologies. So, this is something which is really a part of our daily life. However, in the last few years, there has been a surge in demand for wireless technologies. More and more devices are getting connected. These devices use various wireless technologies.
With the surge of demand in IoT based products, we also have witnessed the surge of requests for multiple technologies affecting a lot of applications. The first major shift was the move from cord to cordless, in other words the rechargeable battery pack feature. Now we see another big change in this application as there is more and more connectivity on these devices.
Typically, we have Bluetooth connectivity, NFC connectivity and even UWB. These technologies bring new services and new features to these devices. We need scalability to locate tools. BLE and UWB can help with that. On the battery pack they also need to make sure that the batteries are genuine and not fake ones and here NFC can help. BLE can also be used to configure the device and last but not least record the data usage.
Moving on to the market itself, according to the market figures from ABI research, IoT market is growing significantly. And on top of that, all technologies are growing.
STM32 Wireless Ecosystem – Alliances, Protocols & More
Seamless software migration is often a decisive factor for customers. STM32 wireless are STM32 which means that they benefit from the already massively adopted STM32 ecosystem.
STM32 family is extremely strong and well recognized in the general-purpose area. For wireless there is something different called standardization. Wireless technologies are numerous and evolving constantly through multiple alliances shaping the specifications and certifications in some cases. It is therefore critical for ST to be present in the main alliances to reflect in the specification updates and roadmaps what we see on the market and the requests from our customers. As an example, ST is a board member of the CSA alliance which is shaping Matter specification/ecosystem. The same alliance is also taking care of the ZigBee specification.
Another example would be the FIRA alliance covering the UWB technology. ST is also a board member of this alliance.
Talking about the STM32WL family, they basically address what we call the Sub-Gigahertz market, and they are multi-protocol capable meaning that they can support different types of protocols like LoRa, SigFox, Wireless M-Bus, proprietary and others. One can also develop their own protocol on these products. They also have the capability, to be multi-protocol meaning that you can run for example Lora and Sigfox at the same time on the device. Likewise, for the output power, we provide a two PA options in same device, which allows our customers to develop a product compatible for different countries. This is very important because for example, the regulation in Japan, in terms of output power is different from the regulation in Europe. These products are also coming in either single-core or dual-core versions where the dual-core version brings additional security to our customers so that they can improve the system’s security.
The second family is the STM32WB. B stands for Bluetooth Low Energy, but it also supports 802.15.4 protocols like ZigBee, Thread and Matter.
The STM32WB is also a dual-core platform, multiprotocol capable of delivering strong performance. It is based on CortexM4 and CortexM0+. Products are in production today. The last family that ST introduced in March this year is the STM32WBA family. This family is focused on BLE and brings a lot of innovation.
STM32WBA Ecosystem
For the BLE products, STM32WBA leverages ST’s 40-nanometer technology platform, which is a platform on which most of ST’s latest products will be introduced. For STM32WBA, ST leverages on the STM32U5 platform with the same approach as the one explained previously for the STM32WL.
By removing some peripherals and adding the IP for the BLE with STM32U5, we get STM32WBA. Likewise, customers moving from U5 to WBA will be very comfortable because the peripheral IPs are similar, and architecture is the same. It is very versatile. Another thing ST focused was the Trust ZoneR. Trust zone brings the capability for code isolation. The M33 core is much more powerful and therefore the performance is increased.
In terms of security, ST is targeting for what they call SESIP L3 Certification and ARM’s PSA L3 Certification with this platform. But most of the time the PSA standard is let’s say more declarative, so, what we do is that we’re going to an external certification authority which will perform attacks and tests on the device, and they will give us a stamp which is called SESIP L3. The higher the number the higher the security level.
All the things that we need for the for development with STM32Ws starting with nucleo board are available on st.com including our free IDE STM32CubeIDE. For certain cases, say a customer prefer to go with paid IDEs like IAR for they may be using across their organization, or they have preference for it, then they can use those tools and we support them inherently via SDK examples and CubeMX. Altogether, everything you get as a complete package from ST.
The form factor of ST boards called nucleo boards had two connector formats. This is the Arduino Uno connector and then we have the ST Morpho connector standard.
STEVAL-ASTRA1B – Multi-connectivity Asset Tracking Solution
The next level is where ST integrate multiple of these communication technologies in reference design and offer you the same with a complimentary SDK (which is maintained regularly) with supporting mobile apps and cloud integration.
STEVAL-ASTRA1B is one such platform example. It is an asset tracking reference design platform in which we have integrated many wireless technologies plus lots of other things like sensors, memory management, battery charging with Bluetooth, LoRaWAN, NFC and GPS
So, it’s kind of a design which is suitable when you’re developing for a mix of applications, you can mix and match technologies and take an extraction out of this hardware and firmware package for numerous end applications.
The ASTRA platform is suitable for numerous applications like animal tracking, cold chain monitors, shipping trackers, wild animal tracking etc.
For ASTRA platform, the hardware is open and all the design documentation for the hardware is available on the st.com home page for ASTRA. The hardware is pre-certified by us. The design help solves multiple challenges, especially when one is working with multiple radio frequencies, they must ensure that one frequency is not interfering with the other. And when you’re doing this in a very small form factor, the development gets really challenging.
In ASTRA, ST has integrated Bluetooth, LoRaWAN, NFC and GPS wireless functionalities. All these are integrated with a number of sensors, power management and battery to offer developers a ready hardware platform for rapid prototyping.
With Astra, ST offers a mobile app platform. This app is offered with the code on GitHub. You use this app to configure the device, maybe use it with NFC or use with Bluetooth, on top of this, we also offer you something which is a cloud dashboard which is an ST managed cloud dashboard which you can use for tracking and monitoring with the Astra Board for evaluation and proto purposes. One can register the device to this cloud and can send the data from ASTRA node or other similar ST nodes directly via LoRaWAN gateway.
Matter Makes Smart Home Connectivity Simple
Matter is a new protocol which has been brought out by CSA. CSA is Connectivity Standard Alliance. This alliance was previously well known as Zigbee Alliance. Matter was initially named CHIP (connected home over IP) and the new Matter rebranding happened very recently before the final announcement of standard and it was renamed as Matter.
This is a new standard which we expect could be taking next huge leaps for building automation and smart home devices connectivity around you.
Under the matter umbrella, there are multiple physical media like Wi-Fi, Ethernet and thread, Thread is 2.4GHz mesh networking technology based on 802.15.4. In Matter, there is a use of Bluetooth for commissioning/onboard devices on to the Matter IP network and this does make life easy for users as they can easily onboard a device securely using their mobile phone. Matter currently supports WiFi, Thread and Ethernet media. There may be more communication technologies coming under matter in future but primarily if you observe, the transport layer is going to be IP compliant.
Because of being IP compliant, Matter can be used across different kinds of products, like it can be used in TVs, media units, building automation cameras and it could be a never-ending list. We’re talking from live TV to lights on the same network under matter, that’s how it has been visualized.
In a matter node, each hardware runs an IP stack. On top of this stack, Matter exists on the application layer. Another beauty of matter is it’s an open source, thus, its code is available on Matter website.
Anyone who is a registered member with CSA alliance, they can access the code. Members can participate in working groups and contribute to the future developments under the standard.
