News of Telit Cinterion celebrating the approval of its ME310M1-W1 module on AT&T’s network showed how a continued, close collaboration between Telit Cinterion and Sony Semiconductor Israel bore fruit.
The module is a Cellular Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) device based on Sony’s Altair ALT1350 chipset, which additionally supports unlicensed spectrum and satellite connectivity, to provide uninterrupted connectivity for applications such as asset tracking.
The approval of the module for use on AT&T’s network was a “key milestone for the commercialisation of the module,” according to Marco Stracuzzi, VP of Product Management at Telit Cinterion, in an exclusive interview given to IoT Insider. “The US is one of the biggest markets for LTE-M technology because the three major MNOs offer nationwide coverage on LTE-M.”

“The approval is also a significant milestone for us as it provides a further validation of our joint technologies,” added Guy Cohen, Director of Product Management at Sony Semiconductor Israel.
The factors leading up to the creation of the module can be attributed to 3GPP’s decision to state that LTE-M and Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) are now part of the 5G standards, and because of this, “we took a strategic decision to continue investing in a next-generation LTE-M IoT module,” explained Stracuzzi.

“The ALT1350 is our third-generation cellular IoT chipset,” said Cohen. “It is designed for Massive IoT and to meet the evolving and growing needs of the cellular market.”
Use cases and features of the module
The two primary use cases for the module, as detailed by Stracuzzi, are asset tracking/telematics and smart metering, both of which have requirements for devices with low power consumption which can be left to operate in the field for several years. Other use cases the module is applicable for include smart agriculture and remote patient monitoring.
“The beauty of this module is that it can support both cellular communications and other short-range protocols, for example mesh protocols,” added Stracuzzi. “You can use the module with the Sony chipset inside the meter and make the meter not only an end point but a gateway that can communicate over these short-range mesh protocols with other meters.”
As well as focusing on low power consumption to ensure the chipset on which the module is built can run in the field uninterrupted, Cohen said that Sony Semiconductor Israel has invested in advanced features integration within the chipset: “For example, an AI engine for Edge processing. It includes indoor and outdoor positioning technologies, with integrated GNSS or Wi-Fi for indoor positioning.”
Cohen noted that the chipset, which supports LTE-M and NB-IoT and short-range radio, was anticipated to open up new use cases and opportunities.
“We are now offering an embedded SIM (eSIM) as part of the module,” said Stracuzzi. “This reduces the size of the final device because our customers don’t have to add an external SIM … We also support remote provisioning capabilities to allow our customers to activate the connectivity at manufacturing or over-the-air after deployment in the field.”
The Edge AI capabilities mentioned by Cohen also mean there is no need for an external microcontroller (MCU), “they can save money and size and run their application straight onto the module,” Stracuzzi explained.
Low power consumption
“Our designs from scratch are focusing on reducing power consumption,” said Cohen, who added that power consumption was becoming a “key item” for battery-powered IoT devices.
“The ultra-low level of power consumption that we can achieve with the Sony chipset and the Telit Cinterion module unlocks some use cases that couldn’t [previously] use cellular technology,” noted Stracuzzi. “We have customers that were using battery-powered devices like trackers on 2G, but due to the high-power consumption of GPRS they could turn on and have the remote connectivity feature only a few times in the lifecycle of the product.
“Now they can connect the tracker more frequently and have a regular idea of where their device is. They are not limited to 10 connections in its lifetime, for example, but much more.”
Another plus of improving power consumption on battery-powered IoT devices is that the outlook for a business significantly extends. “If you can guarantee them that they can have a smart meter run in the field for five more years, from five to 10 years or even from 10 to 15 years, their business case completely changes,” said Stracuzzi.
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