by Ross Sabolcik, VP and GM, Industrial and Commercial IoT

As we gear up for Works With 2021 this September 14-15, we are focusing this year’s content on four IoT tracks: Smart Home, Smart Cities, Industrial IoT and General IoT.

We kicked things off last week with Jake Alamat’s blog post on what to expect for the smart home track. Today, I’m here to talk about what you can expect from the Industrial IoT track.

Industrial IoT is currently one of the hottest segments within the IoT, spanning some of the most widely-used applications in our day-to-day life: from commercial lighting and heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) to submetering and access control – all essential to our livelihoods. Other examples include wireless electronic shelf labels, asset tracking tags and contactless checkout sensors that have revolutionized the retail shopping experience.

During Works With you can expect to interact with some of the brightest minds and biggest brands in the industry, and customize your own agenda jam-packed with topics that range from smart switches, energy-saving tips for metering, and finding the right mesh network to optimize fleet management and energy use.

The industrial IoT track will feature workshops and sessions including:

• Utility grid modernization
• Smart street lighting infrastructure
• Smart retail solutions
• Fleet management

Works With 2021 attendees can choose from a wealth of sessions detailing how to effectively address the biggest challenges industrial IoT developers face, including interoperability, security and power-efficiency.

Silicon Labs’ state-of-the-art wireless solutions offer improved performance, reliability and security for a variety of industrial applications including lighting, retail, human machine interface, HVAC and access control. Our deep RF and mesh networking expertise enable engineers to develop smart industry products that better manage energy consumption and reduce costs. Learn more about our industry-leading MCUs, wireless IC products and development kits for the rapidly growing industry market – all during Works With 2021.

Register for free today.

By: Jake Alamat, general manager, IoT Home & Life Business Unit

As we gear up for Works With 2021 this September 14-15, we are focusing this year’s content on four IoT tracks: Smart Home, Smart Cities, Industrial IoT and General IoT."

It’s almost that time of the year again for Silicon Labs to bring the global IoT industry together to advance wireless connectivity. Works With 2021 will take place virtually and free once again this September 14-15 and registration is officially open. If you haven’t saved your spot yet, register today for free!

Launched last year, Works With was a “gathering of the minds” with 6,000+ developers, ecosystem partners and device makers from across the global IoT industry. This year promises to be no different – if anything, it will be bigger and better.

As a leading connector of wireless IoT, we decided to focus on four tracks this year: Smart Home, Smart Cities, Industrial IoT and General IoT.

I’m here to tell you what to expect at Works With 2021 on the smart home front:

Quite possibly the biggest development in the smart home space is the formation of the Connectivity Standards Alliance and the official launch of the Matter (formerly Project CHIP) protocol. Matter’s goal of enabling secure wireless device interoperability across protocols and ecosystems has the potential to make smart home technology go mainstream. There’s a lot to learn about Matter and all the relevant players will be at Works With 2021 to dive deep on this subject.

With more than 60 sessions and workshops across the four tracks, 18 are specifically for the smart home and 24 sessions in our general track are directly relevant to the smart home. Connectivity and ecosystem experts will lead enlightening hands-on workshops for the Amazon, Apple, Google and other top IoT ecosystems on how to develop smarter, safer and more efficient home and consumer products.

Topics will span a wide spectrum, including Apple’s HomeKit and its development over OpenThread, the development of Matter for home ecosystems, smart home security, IoT applications in homes and buildings, RF range extensions – and the list just continues to grow. Last year’s marquee keynote was with Ring founder and chief investor Jamie Siminoff, and it’ll be exciting to share this year’s roster of IoT leaders keynoting Works With 2021.

The simplicity, reliability and robustness of Silicon Labs’ products make them the solutions of choice for smart home developers, regardless of ecosystem, protocol or application. Our silicon, software and development tools help deliver secure, scalable, reliable, low-power products. With our interoperability and upgradable architecture, we simplify code reuse and help future-proof deployed devices, securing connected products throughout their full lifecycle.

Register to Works With 2021 today.

Silicon Labs upgraded its EFR Connect Bluetooth® Low Energy (BLE) mobile app with four new valuable features, making it the first (and only) BLE mobile app to offer data throughput and mobile interoperability tests to embedded IoT developers. This blog introduces the new EFR Connect 2.3 app, available for download on June 16, 2021.

What’s New on EFR Connect 2.3 BLE Mobile App?

EFR Connect 2.3, the new version of Silicon Labs' BLE mobile app, provides embedded IoT developers with four new features: mobile interoperability test, BLE throughput test, GATT configurator and blinky demo.

Breaking Down the Four BLE Mobile App Features

1. Mobile Interoperability Test

The new mobile interoperability test helps developers quickly verify their Silicon Labs Bluetooth Low Energy SoCs and modules against Android and iOS mobile devices globally. EFR Connect is the first BLE mobile app to bring this high-efficiency feature to developers by simply tapping a single button on the app UI. When started, the mobile interoperability test runs a sequence of standard Bluetooth operations between the mobile phone and Silicon Labs hardware to verify interoperability and log results via UART and packet trace interface (PTI) for further assessment and debug.

2. BLE Throughput Test

The Bluetooth specification defines theoretical throughput levels for various PHYs. In contrast, the actual throughput that can be achieved by a BLE application is lower and hard to measure – that is until EFR Connect 2.3 came to be: it now enables embedded developers to run BLE throughput tests quickly. Developers can easily measure application data throughput between the mobile and embedded device in either direction, see the difference between the theoretical max and the actual throughput available for implementation, and determine the impact of distance and signal strength on throughput.

3. GATT Configurator

EFR Connect 2.3 now introduces developers to the most flexible GATT configurator, allowing them to intuitively create and modify multiple GATT databases in the mobile, while swiftly switching server and client roles between the mobile and embedded device. An existing GATT database created with the GATT configurator on Simplicity Studio (IDE) can be easily exported to EFR Connect and vice-versa, just like sharing a GATT database between embedded projects on Simplicity Studio.

What's the benefit? Faster development! Developers can now emulate a BLE server in the mobile app, make testing and debugging easier, and avoid duplicate coding when developing the client-side application.

4. Blinky Demo

To all developers new to Silicon Labs or those looking to skip basic practicalities and jump straight into coding – Blinky demo is your new best friend. The new Blinky demo on EFR Connect 2.3 accelerates time to 'hello world' for BLE connectivity, getting developers started faster. If there is activity between the EFR Connect mobile app and an embedded device, and Blinky shows a green light – a developer is ready to start generating value through embedded coding.

Why Use BLE Mobile App?  

Why are so many developers using a BLE mobile app? Simply put, time is money. With EFR Connect, developers can save time spent on testing and debugging code. With the new 2.3 version come unique, valuable features that no other BLE mobile app can offer!

Availability

Silicon Labs EFR Connect 2.3 will be available on June 16, 2021. Download it here: Android, iOS, GitHub.

Related Podcast: Why BLE Mobile App matters for developers? In this podcast Tiago Monte explains how you can reap the most out of a BLE Mobile App!

Introduction

Welcome to the second Timing 201 blog post on the topic of wander, aka really slow jitter. 

Last time, I reviewed wander versus jitter, the motivation for understanding wander, and discussed Maximum Time Interval Error (MTIE), an important wander standards metric.  I originally planned to discuss Time Deviation (TDEV) next, an equally important wander metric. However, in reviewing the material, I realized it is best to first understand what led to the predecessor metric Allan Deviation (ADEV). So, that is the topic I will focus on today.      

A Brief Recap

You will recall from the previous post [1] that 10 Hz is the usual dividing line between wander and jitter. Phase noise at offset frequencies below 10 Hz is regarded as wander, while anything at or above 10 Hz is regarded as jitter.

Standards bodies such as the ITU rely on masks that provide limits to wander specs based on MTIE and TDEV. See for example ITU-T 8262 [2].  As noted last time, MTIE looks at peak-peak clock noise over intervals of time and is very useful for sizing data buffers in telecommunications applications.

ADEV is TDEV’s Predecessor

TDEV is one of a number of special deviation statistics. It can be derived from the Modified Allan Deviation or MDEV which, as the name implies, is derived from Allan Deviation. In fact, the Allan Deviation is the forerunner of several special deviation statistics including TDEV, which is why it is worth our consideration. For an overview of variances used in frequency stability analysis, see section 5.2 in the Handbook of Frequency Stability Analysis by W.J. Riley [3].

In today’s post, I will cover these main points:

• Oscillator noise can be modeled as power-law processes.
• Such power-law processes limit the usefulness of standard deviation for analyzing frequency stability.
• Allan deviation is an improvement over standard deviation for analyzing frequency stability.   

Oscillator Power-Law Noise Processes

Oscillator instabilities can be modeled as combinations of power-law noise contributions on log-log plots whose slopes change depending on the function and whether the plot is in the frequency or time domain. For example, per IEEE Standard 1139-2008 [4], the following slopes apply for a phase spectrum Sphi(f) log-log plot. FM and PM refer to Frequency Modulation and Phase Modulation respectively. White PM noise is random and uncorrelated.  All the other noise processes are random but correlated.

Since phase noise “script L” or L(f) as shown here is ½ of Sphi(f), the same slopes apply as in the annotated figure below [5]. This example phase noise plot shows regions where the different power noise processes apply. Note that this is just an example and not all oscillators will exhibit all of these processes, which can be caused by electronics or the operating environment.

Standard Deviation

You will recall that the standard deviation is a statistic that measures how “spread out” or dispersed a set of numbers is from the mean. The standard deviation s is the square root of the standard variance s^2, which can be written out like the following for N samples:

s^2 = 1/(N-1) * Sum [(y_i – y_mean)^2]

Where
y_i           = ith sample
y_mean  = mean sample value
Sum        = summation of the argument from i = 1 to N samples

A potential problem that can occur is if the mean value is a moving target, i.e., if it changes significantly with the number of samples. This problem can occur when studying frequency stability due to the power-law noise processes discussed above.   

There is an excellent software tool, Stable32, written by William Riley for frequency stability and wander analysis. It is available for free from the IEEE Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics and Frequency Control Society (UFFCS) [6]. Stable32 can be used to import frequency counter data and analyze it in terms of frequency or phase (time).       

One of the many useful features of this tool is that you can also generate frequency and phase time series data with varying combinations of these power-law noise processes. You can then observe what happens when applying the standard deviation to noisy data sets of varying sample sizes. Below is a table and plot showing the divergence of the standard deviation when applied to Flicker FM (f^-3) noise data.  As you can see in the figure the standard deviation diverges (increases) with sample size, which is undesirable and limits its usefulness.

Allan Deviation

The Allan deviation, named after David Allan, was developed at the National Bureau of Standards (NBS), now the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), in the 1960s to overcome the divergence problem when studying frequency stability [7]. It is the square root of the Allan Variance, a 2-sample variance that looks at the first differences in fractional frequency or the second differences in phase.

The modern form of this statistic that is most used is the Overlapping Allan Variance.  See section 5.2.4 in the Handbook of Frequency Stability Analysis [3]. The corresponding Allan Deviation can be written out for phase as:    

ADEV (m*tau0) = SQRT {(1/(2*(N-2m)*(m*tau0)) * Sum [x_i+2m – 2x_i+m + x_i]^2 } 

Where
x_i           = ith time error samples
N             = total number of samples
tau0        = time error sampling interval
m            = number of sampling intervals or AF (Averaging Factor)
Sum        = summation of the argument from i = 1 to N-2m

To further demonstrate how the overlapping ADEV calculation works, I have generated a spreadsheet where I took some sample data and directly crunched the numbers as shown above.  The results matched Stable32 exactly. See the attached spreadsheet, Overlapping_AVAR_ADEV_Example.xlsx.

Now, if we go back to the Stable32 tool and compare the Allan Deviation (for m=1 only) versus the Standard Deviation, we will see something like the following results: 

Note that this exercise is replicated after Figure 6 in the Handbook of Frequency Stability Analysis [3]. The results are similar but not identical as the noise source files change every time they are generated. In this case, I set the Stable32 Noise Parameter for Flicker FM = 1 and kept all the other parameters set to 0.  

As the figure illustrates, the Allan deviation does not diverge with sample size, a great improvement over the standard deviation.  This is a much more convenient and useful statistic for making “apples to apples” comparisons between frequency stability data sets of varying sample sizes.

Conclusion

In this post, I have discussed Allan Deviation (ADEV) as a necessary stepping stone to understanding Time Deviation (TDEV), which I will cover next time. 

I hope you have enjoyed this Timing 201 article.  

As always, if you have topic suggestions or questions appropriate for this blog, please send them to kevin.smith@silabs.com with the words Timing 201 in the subject line. I will give them consideration and see if I can fit them in. Thanks for reading. Keep calm and clock on.

Cheers,
Kevin

References

[1]K. Smith, "Timing 201 #9: The Case of the Really Slow Jitter – Part 1", Timing 201. 2021 [Online]. Available: https://www.silabs.com/community/blog.entry.html/2021/03/19/timing_201_9_thecaseofthereallyslowjitter-oio5. [Accessed: 26- May- 2021]

[2]ITU-T G.8262 Timing characteristics of a synchronous equipment slave clock. ITU, 2019 [Online]. Available: https://www.itu.int/rec/dologin_pub.asp?lang=e&id=T-REC-G.8262-201811-I!!PDF-E&type=items. [Accessed: 26- May- 2021]

[3]W. Riley, Handbook of Frequency Stability Analysis, NIST Special Publication 1065. NIST, 2008 [Online]. Available: https://tf.nist.gov/general/pdf/2220.pdf. [Accessed: 26- May- 2021]
Note: A version of this handbook and many other excellent related papers are available on Mr. Riley’s Hamilton Technical Services website at https://www.wriley.com/.

[4]"1139-2008 - IEEE Standard Definitions of Physical Quantities for Fundamental Frequency and Time Metrology---Random Instabilities", Ieeexplore.ieee.org, 2008. [Online]. Available: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/4797525. [Accessed: 26- May- 2021]

[5]D. Leeson, "Oscillator Phase Noise: A 50-Year Review", IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control, vol. 63, no. 8, pp. 1208-1225, 2016 [Online]. Available: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=7464875. [Accessed: 27- May- 2021]

[6]W. Riley, "Stable32 - Software for Frequency Stability Analysis, by William Riley | IEEE UFFC", IEEE UFFC, 2018. [Online]. Available: https://ieee-uffc.org/download/stable32-software-frequency-stability-analysis-william-riley/. [Accessed: 27- May- 2021]

[7]D. Allan and J. Levine, "A Historical Perspective on the Development of the Allan Variances and Their Strengths and Weaknesses", IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control, vol. 63, no. 4, pp. 513-519, 2016 [Online]. Available: https://tf.nist.gov/general/pdf/2834.pdf. [Accessed: 27- May- 2021]
 

We had high hopes for Works With 2020, Silicon Labs’ first event designed to bring the smart home ecosystem together live and in-person last September in Austin, TX. Then COVID-19 happened. Like everyone else, we had to make some important decisions about if and how we would move forward with Works With 2020. As an in-person event, we expected to welcome upwards of 600 attendees. But going virtual changed the game. As the well over 6,000 people who joined us for what became a 100% virtual event would attest, Works With 2020 was a fantastic and inspiring gathering of developers, ecosystem partners and device makers from across the global smart home market during a time where staying connected meant everything.

As much as we want to host Works With 2021 in-person, the situation still isn’t conducive to large-scale gatherings. That said, our experience hosting last year’s Works With virtually was so positive, I have every confidence that this year’s Works With will be even bigger and better. So just like last year, this year’s event – taking place September 14-15 – will be 100% virtual, live and 100% free to attend.

What’s different for 2021? Lots, but in the best way. This year we have not one but four session tracks: Smart Home, Smart Cities, Industrial IoT and General IoT.

Once again, we’ll be leveraging our unique position as the leading connector in the IoT space to bring together software developers, hardware engineers, product managers, and business leaders from around the world to accelerate the creation of IoT innovations for homes, retailers, workplaces, cities, healthcare, and more.

Our unique position as a comprehensive connector in wireless IoT gives us an incredible opportunity to bring all the ingredient parts of the IoT together. But Works With 2021 isn’t about Silicon Labs – it’s about all of us in IoT. I would like to invite other leaders in the space to join us as speakers. If you have a great story to tell our industry, we can offer a platform to tell it at Works With 2021.

Joining us once again be leaders from the world’s largest IoT ecosystems including Amazon, Comcast, Google, Ikea, Ring and more. We’ll have more keynotes than last year, more workshops than last year, and more opportunities to network. We’ll talk about all the most important topics and trends taking place across the IoT. Amazon Sidewalk, the new Matter protocol, the push for security solutions specifically designed to protect the IoT, and so much more.

This year’s workshops will cover machine learning and AI for IoT end nodes, and what to know about IoT operating systems. We’ll cover how to build for the Amazon, Apple HomeKit, Google and Z-Wave ecosystems, among others. We’ll delve into smart cities with Wi-SUN, and more. We’ll get into industrial IoT with asset tracking and other applications. We’ll dive deep into IoT security including forthcoming regulations everyone needs to consider in their development plans. We’ll also spend time on some of the most highly anticipated and talked about industry efforts including Matter, extending IoT connectivity with Sub-GHz through initiatives like Amazon Sidewalk and Z-Wave Long Range, and so much more.

Please take a moment to register for free and be sure to join us September 14-15 for Works With 2021. We’ll be providing more updates as we add more detail to the agenda, including some super-exciting keynotes in the works.

Z-Wave Long Range is now available for Pre-Certification while pending Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Review  

Last fall, the Z-Wave Alliance announced the new Z-Wave Long Range (Z-Wave LR) specification, currently undergoing third-party silicon certification. The addition of technical capabilities to significantly extend both range and node functionality is also in the works. With such a promising outlook, it only makes sense to start getting your Z-Wave LR Pre-Certification. Let’s break down what this really means. 

What is Z-Wave LR and Why Does It Matter? 

If you’re reading this, chances are you’re already very familiar with Z-Wave LR, but a refresher can always come in handy.  

Engineered to provide significantly extended wireless range and support robust networks, Z-Wave LR extends Z-Wave connectivity beyond the boundaries of the home and accelerates the adoption of Z-Wave in other spaces such as light commercial, hospitality, and multi-dwelling units (MDU). Z-Wave LR is an extra 100kbps DSSS OQPSK modulation addition to the Z-Wave protocol. The modulation is treated as a fourth channel, allowing gateways to add LR nodes to the existing Z-Wave channel scanning.  

Developed and managed by the new Z-Wave Alliance Technical and Certifications workgroups, the updated specification has been designed to usher in a new era of Z-Wave connectivity while still adhering to Z-Wave technology core values such as backwards compatibility and interoperability. The updated specification promotes a number of key technical benefits best summarized as: 

• increased range and coverage 
• increased scalability 
• optimized battery life 
• interoperability 

Its most exciting benefit, however, is the considerable increase in transmission range, spanning over a mile. Z-Wave LR also increases scalability on a single smart home network up to 4,000 nodes. It’s also user friendly, as it extends connectivity without the need for repeaters, guaranteeing and easier install and lower cost. These features make Z-Wave LR scalable beyond the home.   

Why Should You Get Pre-Certified? 

Starting April 1, 2021 original equipment manufacturer (OEMs) are able to submit a product for a Z-Wave LR Pre-Certification based upon Specification version 2021A.  

“But is it worth going through this process?” you might ask. Let us assure you: there is a plethora of benefits to reap.  

For starters, OEMs earn a certification number, the right to market, and a badge that indicates Z-Wave LR functionality. Additionally, it will allow any OEM to sell their product xas Z-Wave LR compliant – a label that will increase your product’s credibility.  

Last – but certainly not least – a certified Z-Wave LR device is interoperable and compatible with the deployed Z-Wave ecosystem of more than 100M products. Plus, you’ll be ahead of the game, as you won’t have to go through the certification process again once this becomes fully available. 

All of these make a strong case as to why a trustworthy OEM should pursue pre-certification. 

Get Started Today 

We’ve compiled a list of resource to help you get started if you’re interested in securing your pre-certification: 

• Get started with your Z-Wave Long Range Product 
• Read from the Z-Wave Alliance here on Z-Wave certification 
• Read more about Z-Wave and Z-Wave Long Range 

The Z-Wave Long Range certification program will be through IPR review through June 1, 2021. 

A special thank you to Elaine He, Sourcing Manager at Shanghai Berry, for sharing with us a deep look into Shanghai Berry.

It is no secret that the global shortage of medical resources has recently been exacerbated by the current COVID-19 pandemic. Many countries are particularly suffering from a large gap between the doctor-patient ratio: Take Germany, which sees 42 licensed physicians per 10,000 population. Numbers get more drastic in China: 20 licensed physicians per 10,000 population, which translates to a doctor-patient ratio of 1 doctor per 500 patients. *

This global shortage of healthcare professionals coupled with the growing need for accurate medical monitoring in the last year made Chinese-based company Shanghai Berry aware that they had just what the medical industry needed: wireless medical monitoring devices like the Fingertip Pulse Oximeter.

Providing Innovative Remote Medical Monitoring

Founded in 2003, Shanghai Berry offers advanced medical monitoring, focusing on non-invasive blood pressure calculation, oxygen saturation detection, and multi-parameter monitoring systems. Their products are extremely valuable for a wide range of consumers – from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients who need to monitor their oxygen saturation (SpO2) levels, to people who simply want to better track their overall health condition. Shanghai Berry also prides itself on putting R&D first – everything they do is based on their in-house research and development.

Affordable Medical Monitoring Devices Make Health Services Accessible to All

Shanghai Berry believes that their products can help address the drastic doctor-patient gap in countries like China, as people are empowered to take health into their owns hands. For instance, their Fingertip Pulse Oximeter, can not only provide instant and remote medical monitoring but safely store patients’ data so it can be shared with physicians, caregivers or even a family member. Having the option of continuously monitoring and sharing the health condition, without the need of hospital visits for patients, frees up valuable medical resources for other patients in need. Increasing the quality and accessibility of healthcare is Shanghai Berry’s contribution to the United Nation Sustainable Development goal of “Good Health and Well-being:” they leverage IoT advancements in medical devices to address the global shortage of medical resources.

Shanghai Berry has seen great success with their wireless monitoring devices across all age groups: the product can monitor the respiratory activity of children while asleep and alert parents if there is abnormal activity. Shanghai Berry’s technology has – in the literal sense of the word – saved lives.

Wearables Are Getting Smaller, but Are They Also Getting Smarter?

But as powerful as their technology is, Shanghai Berry faced the same design challenges as most consumer IoT companies: balancing the ever-growing demand for smaller, portable technology with the constant need of wireless devices to transmit data. In other words – creating affordable low-power wearables without compromising the device’s accuracy.    

After testing numerous wireless solutions, Shanghai Berry decided on Silicon Labs’ BG22 for their Fingertip Pulse Oximeter due the reliable wireless performance, affordable price, and – most importantly – low power consumption, which translates to long battery life. These attributes allow for Shanghai Berry to focus on what matters most: accurate performance tracking in their products that sets them apart from competitors.

Adoption of Remote Medical Monitoring Devices

As data storing and cloud technology becomes more mundane, so do the electronics that leverage these – such as medical devices – and people get more comfortable with taking advantage of technological innovation to improve their health and well-being. While most of their products are currently sold to distributors and hospital systems, Shanghai Berry is hopeful that they will evolve to B2C in the next 5 to 10 years as more consumers adopt wearable and tracking technology by the day.

For more information on Shanghai Berry, visit shberrymed.com.

Get started with developing secure and low-power wireless solutions. Visit the Silicon Labs Medical Devices solution page: https://www.silabs.com/solutions/medical-devices.

*World Health Statistics 2018, World Health Organization, https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/272596/9789241565585-eng.pdf

Today the Zigbee Alliance made two significant announcements everyone in our industry should be aware of, as well as an announcement of our own on the same subject.

First, the Zigbee Alliance announced that it has rebranded to the “Connectivity Standards Alliance” (CSA). Second, CSA has renamed the project formerly known as Connected Home over IP (aka “CHIP”) to “Matter.” 

As many of you know, Silicon Labs was an early supporter of Project CHIP - now “Matter” - because it is well-aligned with our effort to simplify IoT product development and ensure end-user experiences across a wide range of smart home applications are simple, reliable and secure. In fact, we’ve written more than 20% of Matter’s source code and are excited by its potential to greatly improve IoT connectivity. Today we announced our wireless solutions are available for development of Matter end products that support Thread, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth protocols.

 The success of the IoT industry depends on simplicity, reliability and security, and our wireless solutions for Matter allow developers to focus on innovation and bring products to market that enable a seamless consumer experience.

I also encourage you to join us June 8, where Stacy Higginbotham of “Stacey on IoT” will host a panel featuring experts from Silicon Labs, Comcast, Allegion, Wyze, Nanoleaf and Matter to share benefits and use cases related to Matter development.

For more on Silicon Lab’s support for Matter, visit www.silabs.com/matter.

We recently had the chance to speak with Tom McLaughlin, vice president of engineering at Aclara, a subsidiary of Hubbell Inc. Aclara creates smart infrastructure solutions for water, electric, and gas utilities. Aclara’s end to end solution gives utility providers actionable insights into utility customers’ resource consumption with real-time visibility into distribution networks to optimize management of vital commodities.

Aclara’s water infrastructure technology was recently adopted in Silicon Labs’ hometown by Austin Water, the City of Austin’s water and wastewater utility, and Pedernales Electric Cooperative, the largest electric Co-Op in the nation. Below, Tom explains how the water technology works and his insight on why Aclara’s solutions are helping the utilities market evolve by improving resource efficiencies for end consumers.

Tell me about Aclara.

Aclara was founded with a mission to partner with gas, water, and electric utilities to develop smart infrastructure solutions that meet the needs of their customers. My responsibility is focused on building the advanced metering infrastructure systems supporting these efforts.

Can you tell us about the water metering infrastructure technology and how it is used?

In the water industry, our radio frequency-based AMI solution – Aclara RF™ – consists of endpoints connected to water meters that communicate data read from meters to data collectors via licensed frequencies that are owned the utility. Data from the collectors is transmitted back to the utility. In the water industry specifically, initial use cases were centered around gathering basic data on water consumption.

Today, the endpoints have evolved to be much smarter and can perform more intelligent tasks, such as leak detection and tamper detection. Our software platform, AclaraONE®, now enables the utility to extract valuable analytics and data for operators that help them serve their customers better as well as manage water distribution.

How does Aclara’s technology help specifically with water leakage?

Leakage is a huge problem. Many parts of the country have incredibly outdated water utilities. For example, where I live in St. Louis, some of the pipe downtown is still from the 1800s. The pipes are made from wood, and they're being retrofitted with inserts that try to curb the leaks. In some places within the U.S., 20 to 30 percent of the water meant to be delivered to end consumers is lost to leaks. In other parts of the world, that percentage is even higher.  

There are two primary components of Aclara’s solution that address leak detection. The first, after the data is collected, is analyzing it to determine whether a premise has a leak. Our customers, such as DC Water, use data analytics to determine if there's a leak in a home or business and notifies the customer. The second piece is our leak detection system, where we place acoustic sensors that “listen” to the sound of water in mains and communicates that data to the utility over our AMI network. By analyzing the acoustic data, we can localize where a leak is - down to a meter or two. That's proven very helpful for the utilities and we've deployed many of these water sensors.

How is Silicon Labs technology used in your product?

We've partnered with Silicon Labs for a long time. Our Aclara RF product operates in the 450 to 470 MHz band. We specifically use the Silicon Labs Sub-GHz Si446X EZRadioPRO transceivers as a core piece of our system. We needed our product to be extremely high quality, highly accurate, and meet certain FCC rules, specifically Part 90 Mask D. Not all silicon vendors can meet these requirements, but the Si4460 is Part 90 Mask D compliant, while also satisfying all our needs for a high-performance, low-current wireless transceiver.

In addition, the Silicon Labs support team has been incredibly reliable through the years. The applications and field engineers that we've worked with have been top notch, helping us drive solutions to problems.

What other design challenges did you experience?

Power is still a huge issue in the water and gas industries. We create endpoints that communicate with meters and require a 20-year life, which is extremely difficult to do for a piece of electronics, especially when they are communicating several times a day. We needed a very low power transceiver to enable such a lengthy battery life.

Another key issue is flexibility. When you analyze numerous transceiver and radio parts, you realize vendors have different philosophies in terms of how much they allow their customers to configure their devices. The Silicon Labs solution has just the right amount of flexibility, allowing us to configure all the areas we need adjusted for our products.

How do sustainability and mounting climate concerns impact Aclara’s offering?

Electric, water, and gas infrastructures are evolving rapidly to support technologies being developed to combat climate change, such as electric vehicles, photovoltaics, and distributed generation. A major tenet for Aclara is always asking ourselves how our systems can better optimize and automate the distribution networks to better support all these valuable technologies.  

How do you see IoT changing in the next five to eight years?

I think industrial IoT will continue to accelerate we’ve already gone through the phase where you get things connected and can deliver data, so now we’re discovering how to extract information out of said data. The answer is really in the analytics. This analysis may happen in a distributed way, with edge computing devices that look at the information and make decisions on how to optimize the network and the devices on the network. Eventually, we will move to using this information in an automated way.

Last week, Silicon Labs announced the sale of our Infrastructure & Automotive (I&A) business for $2.75 billion to Skyworks Solutions. In doing so, Silicon Labs will be a pure-play leader in intelligent, wireless connectivity for the IoT. As an IoT pure-play, our business can simplify and focus to accelerate our IoT market leadership and growth. This is a great outcome for both our IoT and I&A teams and a rare but authentic win-win-win for all involved. I’m glad to see others evaluating the transaction feel the same way.

The same day we announced that historic news, I was honored and humbled to be appointed president of Silicon Labs. I’ve truly been blown away by all the kind and encouraging notes I’ve received and I want to thank everyone who’s reached out to wish both me and the company well as we continue our journey.

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a believer in the power and potential of our people. Our talented global team pours their passion into their work every day, and the market is rewarding us for it. The market is acknowledging Silicon Labs as the leader of intelligent connectivity with unmatched breadth and depth in our wireless portfolio, the world’s most secure IoT platform, and an extremely strong ecosystem with tens of thousands of customers and hundreds of strategic partners.

Our business is now positioned to capitalize on the truly massive IoT opportunity in front of us with a singular focus. I know I speak for everyone moving forward with the business as an IoT pure-play when I say that the team is energized, focused and ready to help our IoT customers and partners achieve even more success moving forward. We’ve still only scratched the surface of what the IoT can be. There’s so much more to do, and we’re ready to do it.

PS: based on the success of Works With 2020, we’ll be connecting the IoT industry once again at Works With 2021 which is now open for free registration. Works With 2021 is Silicon Labs’ first big opportunity as a pure-play to gather the IoT industry together to accelerate the creation of IoT innovations for homes, retailers, workplaces, cities, healthcare, and more. Hope you’ll join us!