Altair Semiconductor, a provider of LTE chipsets, has announced that it has teamed up with NTT DOCOMO, Japan’s largest mobile services provider, to demo ultra-low-power consumption using LTE extended discontinuous reception (eDRX) functionality on CAT-1 devices at DOCOMO’S R&D Center in Japan.
The announcement follows NTT DOCOMO’s recent chipset interoperability testing completion of Altair’s ALT1160 CAT-1 chipset.
“We are excited to test our LPWA IoT gateway with lower-category LTE technologies, for a solution that targets more than 10 years of battery life,” said Toshiyuki Futakata, VP and Senior Manager, Communication Device Development Department, Radio Access Technology Group, NTT DOCOMO. “Altair has consistently proven itself a valuable partner for forward-thinking, power-optimized LTE solutions and we look forward to collaborating on this project.”
Power saving mode (PSM), as specified by 3GPP Release 12, allows devices to connect to the network only as needed, preserving battery life by remaining in sleep mode. Similarly, eDRX functionality, part of the new Release 13 standards, enables further power improvement by allowing IoT devices to remain inactive for long periods and yet remain registered and accessible to network initiated communication. This reduces the amount of power required and extends battery life significantly.
“The CAT-1 standard doesn’t provide unique power reduction techniques. However, with Release 13, eDRX can exhibit very low current consumption on IoT devices,” said Eran Eshed, Co-founder and VP, Worldwide Sales and Marketing, Altair. “NTT DOCOMO is well-known as an innovator and we are glad to extend our longstanding partnership and demonstrate such advanced cellular IoT capabilities.”
Altair’s ALT1160 CAT-1 chipset is designed specifically for IoT and M2M applications like wearables, vehicle telematics, smart meters and security applications, with low power consumption enabling battery life in excess of 10 years under specific use case conditions.
Edited by
Alicia Young