Murata has announced that it has selected Altair Semiconductor's dual-mode CAT-M1/NB1 chipset and STMicroelectronics’ STM32 MCU and ST33 Secure MCU to develop its cellular IoT solutions. Murata's CAT-M1/NB1 solutions enable LTE connectivity for multiple vertical markets, including ultra-small Asset Tags, pharmaceuticals/healthcare devices, wearable devices and GNSS trackers. The solutions will include support for Amazon Web Services (AWS) and other Cloud-based service providers.
Murata selected Altair’s feature-rich and highly compact ALT1250 chipset to power its Type 1SE and Type 1SC end device and module, respectively. The ALT1250 is the most integrated and advanced chipset that supports CAT-M1 and NB1. It incorporates Altair’s OneSKUTM RF technology to enable multiple LTE band combinations, as well as CAT-M1 and NB1 functionality with a single hardware design. Additional features include GNSS and cellular-based positioning engines, an IoT-optimized security framework, and integrated VoLTE support. The ALT1250’s ultra-low power consumption – including both 3GPP power saving mode (PSM) and eDRX – increases battery life to up to 15 years in certain use cases. This chipset will be firmware-upgradable to support NB2.
The 1SC IoT module is the smallest CAT-M1/NB1 module on the market today. It measures 11.1x11.4x1.4 mm, which is less than half the area of many other commercial solutions. IoT solution providers can pair this module with any of the 700+ part numbers of STM32 MCU portfolio to address a wider range of IoT applications.
The 1SE IoT module measures 15 x 17 x 1.4 mm and is the optimized choice, with minimum power consumption and size. The STM32L462REY6 is an ultra-low-power MCU which features an Arm Cortex-M4 running at 80 MHz with 512KB Flash and 160 KB SRAM. The STM32L4 MCU series features the best-in-class ultra-low-power architecture available on the market with several ultra-low-power modes, including a Standby mode that consumes only 450nA while retaining 16 KBytes of SRAM and RTC running; a super-optimized Shutdown mode draws only 8nA. The ST33J2M0 Secure Microcontroller is based on the 32-bit Arm SecurCore SC300 processor, features 2 Mbytes of embedded flash to store securely sensitive data, hardware accelerators for advanced cryptographic functions and additional security features to help protecting against advanced form of attacks.
Murata, and Altair are showcasing the new module and device at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and at Embedded World in Nuremberg, Germany.
1SC Type samples will be available in March and 1SE Type samples are expected in June.
