Qualcomm Technologies has announced design wins from sixteen companies for its next-generation 9205 LTE modem for IoT, which was announced in December of 2018. These design wins will enable a diverse range of Internet of Things (IoT) end products around the world, scaling to encompass thousands of unique eMTC and NB-IoT devices, and will further enrich the IoT with Qualcomm Technologies’ leading connectivity and compute technologies and engineering expertise.
The 9205 LTE modem is Qualcomm Technologies’ latest purpose-built chipset for the IoT. The modem is unique in bringing together key innovations required to build cellular-enabled IoT products and services in a single chipset, including global multimode LTE category M1 (Cat M1 or eMTC) and NB2 (NB-IoT), as well as 2G/E-GPRS connectivity, application processing, geolocation, hardware-based security, support for cloud services and accompanying developer tools. Furthermore, the Qualcomm 9205 LTE modem is designed to support a wide range of devices, with applications in verticals like asset trackers, health monitors, security systems, smart city sensors, alarm panels, and smart meters, as well as a range of wearable trackers.
Qualcomm 9205 LTE modem technology highlights
- Global multimode LTE IoT modem and connectivity: Support for both 3GPP release 14 Category M1 and NB2 for operation with networks using any of these LTE IoT modes, as well as 2G/E-GPRS to allow for connectivity in areas where LTE IoT is not yet deployed. Category M1 mode also supports voice for applications such as monitored security panels, and mobility for applications such as asset trackers.
- RF transceiver with fully integrated front-end: The Qualcomm 9205 LTE modem features an RF transceiver with extended bandwidth support from 450 MHz to 2100 MHz. It also integrates a comprehensive RF front-end, a commercial first in the cellular IoT space, which is designed to greatly simplify the design and certification of products using the new modem, and therefore accelerate time to commercialization.
- Advanced battery life management: To maximize battery life, the modem couples ultra-low system-level cut-off voltage with provisions for adapting power usage according to the state of charge of the battery.
- Applications processor: Arm Cortex A7 up to 800MHz with support for ThreadX and AliOS Things real-time operating systems. The integrated applications processor avoids the need for an external microcontroller to improve cost-efficiency and device security.
- Geolocation: Integrated global positioning support for Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) including GPS, Beidou, Glonass, and Galileo. The Qualcomm 9205 LTE modem enables design flexibility allowing for the use of either a shared GNSS/LTE antenna or a dedicated one.
- Hardware-based security: Secure boot from hardware root-of-trust, Qualcomm Trusted Execution Environment, hardware cryptography, storage, and debug security.
- LTE IoT Software Development Kit (SDK): Designed to support developers in running custom software on the integrated applications processor, as well as to provide them access to additional capabilities of the Qualcomm 9205 LTE modem, such as geolocation. The SDK offers pre-integrated support for many cloud platforms, including Alibaba Cloud Link One, China Mobile OneNET, DTSTON DTCloud, Ericsson IoT Accelerator, Gizwits, and Verizon ThingSpace, and it also allows developers to extend this integration further and develop support for other major IoT cloud providers.
Companies who have announced products using the Qualcomm 9205 LTE modem include Fibocom, Gemalto, Gosuncn, MeiG, Neoway, Quectel, SIMCom, Telit, Thundercomm and u-blox.
