Semtech and other members of the Wi-SUN Alliance joined forces to produce an RF development platform aimed at advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) and industrial applications. The platform features Semtech’s SX1276 Wi-SUN-compliant RF transceiver and Freescale’s Kinetis microcontroller (MCU) to provide low-power characteristics, on-chip analog, security integration, and scalability across a wide memory footprint.
The RF transceiver implements long-range LoRa technology to produce a 168-dB link budget at maximum range. The LoRa concentrator is a multi-channel, multi-modem solution that can simultaneously receive multiple packets. Along with rates reaching 300 kbits/s, the transceiver offers sensitivity down to -146.5 dBm and a built-in bit synchronizer for clock recovery. Freescale’s Kinetis 32-bit MCUs, based on ARM Cortex-M cores, enables low-power performance and feature integration.
Combined with a Wi-SUN-ready software stack from Nissin, the platform is optimized for metering applications in an effort to reduce infrastructure costs while maintaining, if not improving, quality of service. The platform will initially target industrial customers in the Japanese AMI market.