Maintaining Flexibility with Multiprotocol Wireless Connectivity

Applications for Multiprotocol Connectivity

The usefulness of connected devices in consumer, commercial, and industrial environments can be enhanced or improved through multiprotocol connectivity. In-home automation, for example, Zigbee provides whole-home wireless coverage with its mesh capabilities and makes it possible to control devices from outside the home via a gateway. When Bluetooth LE is introduced, a smartphone can be used for direct local control and location awareness can be added.

Sub-GHz wireless technologies are ideal for smart metering applications since they propagate over wide areas. By adding simultaneous sub-GHz and Bluetooth communication to metering IoT devices, technicians can utilize mobile apps for local setup, information gathering, and maintenance.

In retail or commercial settings, there is a desire to make use of technologies such as Bluetooth beacons to provide location-based advertisements, track assets, and develop heat maps to track foot traffic. By integrating Bluetooth beacons into connected infrastructure such as lighting, large-scale coverage areas can be created. Instead of having to deploy both connected lights and beacons, a light or luminaire can serve as the means to deploy Bluetooth beacons. This provides a more cost-effective avenue to enable location-based services.

What is Multiprotocol Technology?

Many connected devices can improve consumer experience and enhance functionality by supporting multiple wireless connectivity options. We are used to our smartphones supporting Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and other connectivity options to provide streaming media as well as connectivity to headphones and smart watches. The power, size, and cost requirements for many IoT systems has traditionally made supporting multiple protocols challenging. Dynamic multiprotocol wireless connectivity provides a viable means to simultaneously support multiple wireless protocols on a single chip by using a time-slicing mechanism to share a radio between protocols, reducing wireless system cost and simplifying system design.

What are the benefits of supporting multiple protocols?

Here's a brief look at the different types of multiprotocol connectivity and their benefits.

Programmable Multiprotocol

Programmable multiprotocol support entails having a chipset that, when programmed with the right software stack, can run any number of wireless protocols. Being able to program a chip in production to support BLE, Zigbee, Thread or a proprietary protocol means you can streamline your hardware design and quickly address different markets. A chip platform that supports multiple protocols via different software images is a fundamental prerequisite for all other multiprotocol use cases.

Switched Multiprotocol

Switched multiprotocol enables your connected device to change which wireless protocol is being used by bootloading a new firmware image when the device is already deployed in the field. Consumer experience of settting up or commissioning your product can be greatly improved by making use of smartphone connectivity to swtich between BLE securely onto Zigbee, Thread and other wireless networks. With the addition of over-the-air (OTA) updates, devices can also be updated in the field to evolve to changing market needs.

Dynamic Multiprotocol

Ultimately, any multiprotocol solution must address the possibility of simultaneously running multiple wireless protocols together on one chip, using a time-slicing mechanism to share the radio. This approach opens up even more use cases, especially when combining BLE with other wireless protocols. The simplest of these use cases involves the periodic use of Bluetooth beacons in retail environments from a device that normally operates on Zigbee, Thread or a sub-GHz wireless protocol.

Multiradio Multiprotocol

Dedicated operation of multiple protocols without any trade-offs, especially where different radio frequencies are used by different protocols, requires two radios. There is a lot of value in an application and networking stack that can operate across two radios that perhaps even utilize two completely different frequency ranges. One example is smart metering in Great Britain, where the government will deploy dual PHY Zigbee communications hubs in 30 million households and businesses by 2020. This effort is to enable a Home Area Network that contains both 2.4 GHz Zigbee devices and sub-GHz Zigbee devices (operating in the 868 MHz band), maintained on the same logical PAN with the communications hub routing traffic between devices on different radio frequencies.

Learn more about Multiprotocol with these training assets