The rapid growth of the IoT is driving a massive new ecosystem of smart, cellular connected machines and things, and with that growth has come the need for a wide range of connectivity options. Qualcomm (News - Alert) Technologies has set itself the goal of helping to evolve LTE into a unified, scalable IoT platform.
The hardware giant has secured more than 100 design wins across more than 60 original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and module OEMs, based on its MDM9x07 chipset family comprised of the Qualcomm Snapdragon X5 LTE (News - Alert) (9x07) modem and MDM9207-1 modem for the IoT, according to a recent release.
The company said that these modems are designed to address customer connectivity and power challenges in a wide range of use cases, including: smart cities, commercial applications and industrial designs.
“Our LTE modems for IoT allow us to bring customers the power and flexibility of the same modem core technology already launched in hundreds of millions of devices globally so that they can address a broad range of commercial and industrial applications where wide area cellular connectivity adds a tremendous benefit,” said Serge Willenegger, SVP, product management, Qualcomm Technologies. “Our momentum demonstrates the widespread acceptance of our LTE IoT solutions in many fast growing IoT areas, as we help make industries around the world more connected, efficient and sustainable than ever before.”
The Snapdragon X5 LTE modem (9x07) with All Mode capability supports LTE Cat 4 download speeds up to 150 Mbps. The MDM9207-1 modem offers LTE Cat 1 support for up to 10 Mbps on the downlink, power save mode (PSM) and up to 10 years of battery life from two AA batteries. They are designed to be compatible with major cellular standards across the globe, and support Linux OS, ARM (News - Alert) Cortex A7 processor, Qualcomm VIVE™ 802.11ac Wi-Fi with MU-MIMO technology, Bluetooth 4.2, Bluetooth Low Energy, and integrated GNSS.
Dan Schieler, SVP & GM, OEM Solutions, Sierra Wireless (News - Alert), has been working with Qualcomm for years. “Using Qualcomm Technologies IoT modems will make it easier for us to develop smart modules with integrated processing capabilities and help our customers reduce their overall system complexity and get to market faster,” he said.
“Telit has leveraged the power and flexibility of the Qualcomm MDM9x07 chipset and its variants across broad IoT markets,” said Ronen Ben-Hamou, EVP, products and solutions, Telit. “We have been able to address MNO requirements quickly and across many geographies with products ranging from LTE Cat 1 to Cat 4 today, with a path to 3GPP Rel13 MTC technologies like LTE Cat M1 and LTE Cat NB-1 for the future, both in single-mode and multimode variants.”