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The exponential increase of chipsets aimed at the Internet-of-Things market has offers a huge variety of new IP-based products to choose from, which may cause the appearance that older standards such as ZigBee are waning in popularity. However, nothing could be further from the truth, and one example is the new Kinetis KW2x microcontroller family from Freescale Semiconductor.

The Kinetis KW2x is a series of wireless system-on-chip devices aimed at meeting the increased processing and memory requirements associated with applications that use advanced 802.15.4/ZigBee stacks and communications standards in modern Internet-of-Things applications, such as ZigBee Smart Energy 2.0 and the ZigBee Internet Protocol specification, today and into the future.

These devices integrate a 50 MHz ARM Cortex-M4 processor with an 802.15.4-compliant 2.4 GHz RF transceiver on a single chip, providing a low-power, compact, single-chip integrated solution for 802.15.4/ZigBee wireless mesh network applications in home automation, healthcare, smart energy and consumer electronics.

The KW2x family expands on the successful Kinetis microcontroller portfolio based on the ARM Cortex-M4 core, with the software protocol stacks, development tools and IDE all compatible with the existing family of Kinetis MCUs and the ZigBee protocol seamlessly integrated into Kinetis software development tools – allowing you to rapidly get started programming and creating wireless mesh networks for your embedded and IoT applications.

Specifications are rich, as the Kinetis KW2x family integrates a class-leading 2.4 GHz RF transceiver, a Cortex-M4 core and a robust feature set for a powerful, secure and low-power IEEE 802.15.4 wireless solution all integrated on a single die.

These wireless MCUs offer up to 512 KB of flash, 64 KB of RAM and up to 64 KB of FlexMemory. Dual PAN support allows this platform to simultaneously participate in two ZigBee networks, making it useful in complex ZigBee installations or in router or gateway applications.

The KW2x family supports the ZigBee IP network stack, the RF4CE standard, and the ZigBee Home Automation, ZigBee Smart Energy 1.x and ZigBee Smart Energy 2.0 ZigBee application profiles, enabling a broad range of applications.

Along with reducing product size and reducing bill-of-materials cost with a highly integrated solution – the KW2x product line offers strong power efficiency and long battery life in portable, battery-powered Internet of Things applications.

The radio subsystem supports the 2.4 GHz ISM band as well as the 2.36-2.4 GHz MBAN (medical body-area network) band, and offers high power efficiency for its transmit power, along with fast antenna diversity, transmit power up to +8 dBm and a receiver sensitivity of -102 dBm, offering very long communication range. The microcontroller provides enough memory to run complicated protocol stacks on a single IC while also providing plenty of space for user application code.

According to Freescale, this family of devices provides greater processing performance and larger flash and RAM options compared to other similar devices on the market, helping smart IoT appliances and consumer automation products avoid obsolescence as 802.15.4/ZigBee specifications evolve, with the ability to meet future standards and new ZigBee application profiles via firmware updates on the same hardware.

The Kinetis KW2x wireless MCU family provides plenty of Flash and RAM, allowing engineers to quickly upgrade products with new features, including over-the-air remote firmware updates, without the need for costly and relatively difficult replacements of the hardware in users’ homes and other installations.

For applications that require more flexibility, the KW2x platform optionally provides 64 kB of “FlexMemory”, that allows users to configure part of the on-chip flash memory as additional flash memory or enhanced EEPROM. This means users can choose how that memory is allocated between program and data storage, for example if extra EEPROM space is desired for storing configuration data.

The KW2x family offers reduced power consumption and an increased RF link budget, along with antenna diversity which improves reliability of the radio link, particularly in environments where multi-path interference is a problem.

The IEEE 802.15.4 2.4GHz transceiver is designed to reduce transmission power where appropriate, and run in a low-power mode when commanded, helping to achieve strong power efficiency. These devices include hardware assisted dual personal area network support, which means that a single device can communicate wirelessly on two different ZigBee networks, simultaneously using two different PAN IDs.

This makes these chipsets attractive for gateway or router applications in home or building automation networks, connecting together different smart energy or home automation networks without the need for multiple radios.

Security has not been forgotten – as Freescale have integrated advanced security features usually found in higher-end processors, providing security and cryptographic functions including key generation, secure memory and tamper detect functionality.

Secure Flash protects the code and data from unauthorised access or modification, while tamper detection can identify events and asynchronously erase secure RAM, generating an interrupt so the application firmware can take additional actions, including a system reset.

A dedicated cryptographic acceleration unit supports a set of specialised operations to improve the throughput of encryption and decryption operations as well as message digest functions. These features address the growing attention and the need for strong security in embedded SCADA and automation systems as well as connected Internet-of-Things consumer products in the home.

As leaders in Zigbee-based product development, we’re ready to work together with you to develop new product designs, or reviewing and upgrade any existing versions with you for your success. Getting started is easy – click here to contact us, or telephone 1800 810 124.

LX is an award-winning electronics design company based in Sydney, Australia. LX services include full turnkey design, electronics, hardware, software and firmware design. LX specialises in embedded systems and wireless technologies design.

Published by LX Pty Ltd for itself and the LX Group of companies, including LX Design House, LX Solutions and LX Consulting, LX Innovations.

Freescale Semiconductor and Oracle announced earlier this year that they are working together to develop the “OneBox”, a gateway platform for secured service delivery for Internet-of-Things applications based on open Java technology and Freescale silicon.

So what is OneBox all about? The aim of OneBox is standardising and consolidating the delivery and management of Internet-of-Things services through one gateway box rather than multiple gateway boxes from different vendors.

The idea is that the gateway appliance and its Java-based software stack can “speak” all of the different protocols being used to connect devices to the network in a context of, say, a home automation application – a single gateway that is interoperable with every networked Internet-of-Things device in the home.

For example, the OneBox gateway will have the ability to connect to multiple different kinds of RF networks such as 802.15.4, 802.11, Bluetooth and Bluetooth Low Energy, providing conversion and interoperability between different connectivity standards.

The “smart home” OneBox reference implementation from Freescale runs Java SE Embedded and is powered by a Freescale i.MX 6 series applications processor built on the ARM Cortex-A9 core. OneBox has enough local processing power to handle some real-time data processing, and can then send the processed data up to the cloud if desired.

There, Oracle’s infrastructure will be happy to crunch those bytes for you although you could use whatever cloud infrastructure you’d like – there is no lock-in. This local processing power is advantageous because it improves responsive interaction by removing the latency of a trip out to the remote server – for example, when you push the button to turn your lights on you want an effectively immediate response, not a delay of many seconds before the lights actually turn on.

The entire secured service delivery infrastructure – from the core of the network through the gateway to the small edge nodes – uses Java technology, pitched by Oracle as a unifying, open platform for the Internet of Things.

The Freescale/Oracle development team used Java SE embedded on the gateway box and Java ME embedded for the microcontrollers in their OneBox reference implementation. With its broad adoption, open source model, huge ecosystem and well-defined roadmap, Java technology is being pitched by Oracle and Freescale as ideally suited for Internet-of-Things requirements.

Due to the Java base, the system will be open throughout, without requiring hoops for programmers or device developers to jump through. OneBox offers a secure, standard and open infrastructure model for the delivery of Internet-of-Things services, combining end-to-end software with a converged gateway design to aim to establish a common, open framework for secured Internet-of-Things service delivery and management from the core of the network right through to low-power wireless sensors and other nodes at the edge of the network.

As part of the collaboration, Freescale will join the Java Community Process and work with Oracle and other JCP members to drive development of technical specifications for Java, particularly focusing on Java on resource-constrained platforms such as the low-cost microcontrollers that provide the embedded intelligence in Internet-of-Things enabled products.

Freescale will also work with Oracle and other JCP members on new and enhanced Java APIs to improve the support for Internet-of-Things protocols and features available on their microcontroller hardware.

The addition of a service layer based on enterprise-grade Java as an open standard, along with full security, on top of the whole system including the smallest resource-constrained microcontrollers takes the OneBox platform beyond a typical converged gateway.

Oracle and Freescale see it as a blueprint for an ideal secured service delivery infrastructure for the Internet of Things, one that will solve some of the common problems perceived as limiting the advancement of the Internet of Things.

OneBox is designed, both in terms of hardware and software, to be very modular, so the appropriate connectivity – ethernet, WiFi, 802.15.4/6LoWPAN, ANT, Bluetooth, whatever – can be “plugged in” and the corresponding software blocks needed for a particular service automatically loaded. This modularity supports future standards and a variety of use cases – from home automation and consumer electronics to industrial automation.

Freescale believes that it’s the small players that will bring the majority of innovation to the table, and they have specifically ensured that the OneBox platform is open and based on readily available software and hardware in order to promote participation by smaller players and decrease barriers to entry.

Freescale’s edge node sensors and devices based on Kinetis ARM microcontrollers are cheaply available, with all of the tools needed. Freescale silicon is distributed openly through small-volume distributors, datasheets and documentation for their processors are openly available to all, and Java is openly available to download and license.

After this quick summary it appears that this new idea between Freescale and Oracle could provide the backbone for a new, open-source and easily-adapable Internet-of-things platform for almost any situation. As the technology proceeds to mature we’d be more than happy to examine the possibilies available with your organisation for your benefit.

And we’re ready to offer our experience and know-how on this and every other stage of product development to meet your needs. As we say – “LX can take you from the whiteboard to the white box”. So for a confidential discussion about your ideas and how we can help bring them to life – click here to contact us, or telephone 1800 810 124.

Published by LX Pty Ltd for itself and the LX Group of companies, including LX Design House, LX Solutions and LX Consulting, LX Innovations.