First Wi-Fi Chip with Long Distance and Low Power Consumption for IoT Market
The Wi-Fi technology that enables people to exchange large-volume data for free has been more widely used across the world.
However, Wi-Fi still had its shortcomings as connectivity was only possible within 50 meters and required high power consumption.
It astonished the world that Newratek has developed a low-power Wi-Fi core chip to cover a distance about 20 times greater than
the length of coverage of the current Wi-Fi technology based on the IEEE international standard, IEEE 802.11ah.
Newratek is a private start-up sponsored by ETRI to elevate the commercialization of public technologies.
This new and improved technology features a transmission speed of 2 Mbps, which is tens of times faster than
its competing technologies and enables data transmission across a distance as long as one kilometer in radius.
As a result, this low-power, long distance Wi-Fi technology is expected to have a significant competitive edge
in the IoT market against alternative wireless communications, such as ZigBee and Z-wave.
Wide Usages including Sensor Networking, Smart Mirroring, and Broadband Internet Service
Compliant with international standards and based on the technology highly focused on low power consumption and long distance service,
the baseband chips for terminals can address the needs in the IoT market—an emerging and promising industry.
As power consumption is drastically reduced, which is a key element for IoT services,
compared to existing Wi-Fi services, the cost for network establishment for the IoT services is expected to also decrease significantly.
By supporting SPI (Serial peripheral interface), UART (Universal asynchronous receiver/transmitter), GPIO (General-purpose input/output), and etc.,
this chip is designed to be universally connected with various types of sensors.
It also adopts ARM based dual micro-controller to control communication protocol and be used as application processor.
Furthermore, this low-power, long-range Wi-Fi chip is manufactured in 40nm silicon process technology for cost efficiency.
According to the Wi-Fi Alliance, the 802.11ah protocol will use this spectrum’s advantages of long-range communication coverage
and low power consumption to be a crucial player in various industries, such as sensor networks; wearable device communications for healthcare;
field wireless communications for industrial automation; automatic metering(smart meter) for gas, water, and electricity; and broadband wireless services.
Occupying the Global IoT Market in Advance of Qualcomm and Broadcom
By the end of 2015, Newratek plans to complete a development of AP(Access Point) in a form of FPGA,
and the commercial chip for device and AP will be shipped in Q3 2016.
“The new technology was developed to take the initiative for our Wi-Fi service in the IoT market ahead
of our global competitors such as Qualcomm and Broadcom,” explains Dr. Sok Kyu Lee, CEO of Newratek.
“Our outstanding technology will enable us to have an opportunity to occupy IoT market in advance of global competitors.”
This latest technology is an outcome from ETRI’s R&D roject sponsored by the Ministry of Science,
ICT and Future Planning and Value Invest Korea, a private investor.
This achievement is also a success model of the creative economy that combines technological competitiveness of
a venture company with the government’s support and private financial resources.
Newratek was selected as the best business practice of the creative economy, announced by the Ministry of Science,
ICT and Future Planning last September, as the first case of a large-scale team start-up spun off from a government-funded research institute.
