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Following the approval of the NarrowBand-IoT (NB-IoT) standard last summer, ARM has announced the acquisition of two leading companies in the field.
NB-IoT offers low power and wide area connectivity designed to connect multitudes of devices at scale over a long range. The approval of the standard was a landmark moment for the IoT industry and ARM is looking to lead in the field by combining its chip security technologies with the specialist engineering expertise of Mistbase and NextG-Com.
“We are already working on ARM Cordio-N solutions to reduce the time to market for our partners’ NB-IoT standard-compliant chips,” says Paul Williamson, Wireless Business General Manager at ARM. “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.”
ARM Cordio offers a complete solution for LPWAN (Low-Power Wide-Area Network) applications based on the NarrowBand IoT (NB-IoT) standard, and complete RF-to-Application coverage for WPAN (Wireless Personal Area Networks) radios based on the Bluetooth 5 and 802.15.4 standard.
NB-IoT offers low power and wide area connectivity designed to connect multitudes of devices at scale
The number one thing which should be on everyone’s mind when designing IoT products is security. By combining the ARM NB-IoT IP with the company’s existing secure cloud solutions, ARM believes it will allow their chip partners to create products with complete end-to-end security as NB-IoT accelerates deployments.
“Deployment of NB-IoT technology in 2017 represents an inflection point in the LPWAN market as it addresses pent-up demand for an open standards-based solution that service providers can deploy widely at scale,” observed analysts from IHS Markit. “As a result, IHS Markit forecasts that NB-IoT will grow from 1 million connections in 2017 to over 141 million connections by 2021, an astounding 240 percent compounded annual growth rate, making it the fastest growing LPWAN technology we track.”
Mistbase is based in Lund, Sweden, and provides a complete NB-IoT physical layer implementation solution. NextG-Com is based in London, England, and offers a complete layer two and three software stack for NB-IoT. The acquisitions expand on ARM’s current IoT portfolio and offer just two examples of a continued investment from the company to offer a range of scalable solutions which connect billions of devices.
What are your thoughts on ARM’s NB-IoT investments? Let us know in the comments.
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