The radio integrates imec and Holst Centre’s sub 1GHz IEEE 802.11ah transceiver and Methods2Business’ MAC hardware and software IP and application layer. This is said to enable 802.11ah communication between large numbers of IoT clients and the internet using a central access point.
The transceiver comprises a complete low-power physical layer implementation of RF front end and digital baseband. It features a 1.3nJ/bit fully digital polar transmitter optimised for IoT applications, as well as for the 802.11ah Wi-Fi protocol. The partners say the transmitter surpasses the tight spectral mask and error vector magnitude requirements of conventional Wi-Fi standards while demonstrating a power consumption as low as 7.1mW in Tx mode for 0dBm output power.
Compared to other IoT standards, 802.11ah’s sub GHz carrier frequency and mandatory modes with 1MHz/2MHz channel bandwidths,are said to allow devices to operate over longer range with data rates ranging from 150kbit/s to 7.8Mbit/s. The standard also uses OFDM to mitigate against fading and to achieve high spectral efficiency.
Methods2Business’ 802.11ah MAC core implements HaLow functionality to address the drawbacks of Wi-Fi in IoT. Besides mandatory features for connecting up to 8000 IoT clients, better collision avoidance and higher throughput, time critical functions are implemented in hardware, with higher level MAC protocols realised in software.