In our latest Electronic Specifier Insights podcast, we spoke to Alistair Fulton, General Manager & VP, Wireless (IoT/LoRa) & Sensing Business at Semtech all about LoRa
Electronic Specifier Insights speaks to Alistair Fulton, General Manager & VP, Wireless (IoT/LoRa) & Sensing Business at Semtech
Electronic Specifier
Hello and welcome to today's latest podcast from electronic specify insights Today we'll be talking all things, Laura, which has become the de facto technology for Internet of Things, networks and enables the smart IoT applications that help solve some of the biggest challenges with the facing society today from infrastructure efficiency to smart agriculture. To find out more, we're going to be talking to Alister Fulton, vice president and general manager of semtex wireless and sensing products group about the evolution of Laura technology and the Laura wide area network protocol, and some of its potential applications. So Alistair, welcome. How are you?
Very nice to me,
I think it's a good place to to to kick us off, Alistair would perhaps provide our listeners with a bit of background around Laura technology, and in particular reference to to semtex involvement,
of course, yeah, so
sentech is the provider of Laura radio chips. And Laura radios are a particularly low power long range technology that was developed back in 20 2010 2015 or so by a small French startup company called secure actually, that we acquired in 2015, into our wireless business. And the reason we acquired it is the same reason we talk about it today, which is in IoT, which is where I spent all of my professional career mostly on the platform side. Frankly, the range of tools available for developers, compared to five years ago, even now, is incredibly powerful in terms of what what you can do with the data. And the ease of building really quite powerful applications. And the range of platforms available for developers has grown, you know, similarly to now many hundreds, including, of course, all the big ones like AWS, IoT, and Azure IoT. But all of those platforms, and all of those developers share a common problem in IoT, and that is the ability to easily cost effectively and efficiently connect everything. The IoT, the Internet of Things, in many ways, is a is a concept based upon the availability of an extensive data set, not always a perfect data set, but an extensive data set, regardless of most of the problem that you're looking at, whether it's a supply chain or logistics problem, whether it's a air quality and environmental management problem, whether it's a utilities metering problem, the very act of connecting those end devices and ingesting data from them, has has typically incurred quite a lot of development, complexity, and frankly, quite a lot of cost. And that's really held back the IoT. So when certain texts saw Laura, in the early engagements we had with sectio, back in 2015, it was absolutely apparent to us that that bringing this technology forward and bringing it to a wider market was an incredibly important thing to do to help promote the IoT. And that's actually precisely what we've seen happen in in pretty much record speed. I think I've worked with, I'd say every connectivity technology over the years, and I've not seen one that's gone from inception to the verge of mass adoption in what's a little less, five years, six years. And I think that's also further testament to the fact that Laura really fills a gap. Now, Laura, in and of itself, the hardware is great. The thing that really differentiates Laura is actually Laura, when I'll explain the difference between those two things. Laura is the physical radio. And Laura LAN is a defined protocol that's managed by the Laura Alliance, but that is really an ecosystem driven protocol. It's a definition of how the different components in a lorawan system communicate with one another and a standardisation of the way that those components communicate with one another. And the reason that that is quite so important is that it drives a standard, that it means that I can buy a lorawan gateway device in Australia. And it functions in the same way as a lorawan gateway device that I buy in England or the US. And that's very, very critical for the development of a developer and solution provider ecosystem that now spans the globe. So as with many technical solutions, it's it's not the technology that betters actually, in some respects, is actually the ecosystem around that technology. Someone said to me years ago that the best technologies, the ones that win are the ones that do the job well enough and the ones that have a lot of friends, and I think Laura were and check both of those boxes.
Okay. Sure. Sure. And I think on a obviously very topical theme with the with the current COVID pandemic we're seeing, you know, more and more professionals working from home, it seems something of a smart home revolution, which is, you know, more than likely set to continue even in even in a post COVID world, which will drive the need for more for more smart devices. Can you explain the role that low power wide area networks can play here?
Well, I think, you know, one of the things that COVID of the many things that COVID has has taught us is that problems that are system based, that are based in populations require significant amounts of data to understand what's happening, and how to manage a complex situation. Now, COVID is no different. And, you know, we've seen Laura, when used over the last gosh, I can't believe it's a year now, but used extensively over the last year, to provide data to help public or private health authorities understand what's going on, sometimes that's within a hospital environment, tasks as simple as providing emergency call buttons for patients who are in temporary care units through to, in our case, actually semtech. We're using a system that we built over the last year or so, within our facilities to understand what is the air quality within each room, how many people are in each room to provide low cost tags to folks, so that we can track and trace contacts in the event that someone has a an exposure. And it's the ability of law awareness and LP when in general but Laura, when particularly with its private deployment model, to be, you know, put in straightaway, I can deploy a lorawan network, simply by buying a lorawan gateway and plugging it in, I don't need a licence, I don't need to worry about the spectrum. And that flexibility has helped enterprises and industrial providers, as well as public sector very rapidly deploy solutions that help understand what's going on, you know, who's affected? Who's in contact with whom, and as I said, in, in the case of in building environments, you know, what's the level of cleanliness? Is there a co2 in the air that indicates a high level of presence in the room? How many people are walking down this corridor? Or how high traffic is this area, even through to you know, more mundane things? Like, is the soap dispenser full in the bathroom? Is the hand sanitizer dispenser full in the foyer. And so we've seen a very rapid proliferation of all sorts of different applications up to an including connected ventilators to track the performance of a ventilator, and the location of ventilators. And it's the flexibility of law awareness really supported all of those different use cases.
I see. I see. And there have been security concerns raised with with this new norm of, of working from home and more and more people working remotely. What is it a challenge to mitigate these these risks? And you know, what, what are the general practices of how these how these risks can be lessened,
essentially, I mean, security has been one of those watchwords in IoT for a number of years. And I think for very good reason. The one of the defining differences, I guess, in IoT is that most sensors tend to not have a user interface, and tend not to have direct interaction. And so it's hard to understand kind of what's going on. But security in COVID related applications, I guess the first one I've talked about really is his contact tracing, their contact tracing, depending on the society that you're in, can be really quite a sensitive topic, because of the connotations of privacy, you know, someone knows where I am. And as a consequence, a lot of the applications that have used mobile phones actually which which possess all of the technology that you need, Bluetooth to detect proximity, cellular data, backhaul, those applications have been proven very hard to get people to use, because of the concern about privacy, because information about me, is somehow in the hands of my employer or other people. What we've seen is providers using technologies like Laura Wang, actually to provide a an independent solution from people's cell phones to provide a solution that in our case, at least, has a an ID number associated with the badge. And I can only associate that ID number with an employee in my HR systems, which are of course completely bolted down and, and highly secure. So Laura has actually been a tool to mitigate security concerns. The way that Laura wiring works actually, in and of itself is inherently highly secure, with encryption both at the network layer, which means I can't decrypt the packet travelling on your network, but also encryption at the application layer, which means even if somehow I managed to penetrate your network, I still can't decode the app, the data packets and I still can't get to the data, unless I have both the network key and the application key. So that so I think, to the to the overall topic of security, incredibly important in IoT, I think technologies like Laura Wynn provide, you know, both Actual means of providing a higher level of security. But also sometimes in the case of contact tracing, as I said, the perception of higher security as well, which can can be very important in getting people to use these solutions. And if people don't use contact tracing, of course, then, you know, we're not tracing people's contacts. So, usability and acceptability to the customers is really key,
I see. Sure, sure. And staying with COVID, for a moment as to this pandemic is, is placed increasing pressure on city planners and business leaders to accelerate the adoption of critical centre based applications and solutions. Can you explain some of the reasons for this, and ultimately, what it will mean for the adoption of, of Laura, low power centre based technology? Well, I
mean, I think you get a step back and look at the role of it. And I think IoT in many ways is, is the technology world putting its best foot forward to collectively solve some of the big issues that we face as people and in a city environment, those those issues a myriad from managing the environmental impacts of things like people driving around looking for parking spaces, through to managing the energy efficiency of public lighting systems, through to tracking the path of assets and people through a built environment, either to support a better customer experience or to provide security or to provide. And I think the thing that really, as with COVID, actually, the thing that city planners are increasingly realising is that, in order to fulfil my goal of providing a better built environment, the better experience for my residents and visitors alike, I need data. And I need data on a lot of things, I need data on everything, ideally. And I need that data very quickly in order to demonstrate value. And the cost of getting that data can't be too high. Because I think when you look at all of these individual use cases, in a city environment, barring things like managing lighting, which delivers very significant savings very quickly, many of these things have either non financial benefits, or the benefits take a while to accrue. So it's very quick, it's very important to be able to quickly deploy a solution. And what we're seeing in a lot of cities is the fact that you can cover an entire city with five or 10 outdoor gateways using lower when allow city planners to very rapidly layout infrastructure, and very quickly deploy low cost sensors to whatever it is that they're trying to do. Whether it's presence sensing on local transit or tracking rental bikes, and it's the speed and the low cost and the efficiency with which that data can be generated. That's really turning city planners minds towards technologies like Norway,
I see, I see. And as these smart communities begin to establish themselves and emerge, operators are going to be required to standardise on on low power wireless networks, which will both complement and compete with five 5g networks. So how challenging will the standardisation of lorawan based Network Solutions be?
Well, in and of itself, the standardisation of lorawan is very extensive through as I said earlier, the lower Alliance and the and the standards that are Alliance issues on behalf of all of the members including obviously semtech, and being one of those members. So in and of itself, lower ground is a highly standards driven technology, which is what allows me to say, you know, I can buy a sensor on different continents and that sensor fundamentally is the same. The really important thing that we focused on a great deal of effort on actually as an ecosystem, is the fact that Laura were and should be interoperable with everything else. I think one of the things that's really held back the IoT, and this is a, you know, a failure of us all in some respects, as being, you know, folks who've been in this space for Propecia time. And that failure is that many of these systems were designed actually deliberately not to work with each other. You know, they were designed not to be compatible, which, from a customer perspective is just madness, as far as, as far as we can tell. So we spent a lot of time working on how does lorawan interoperate with 5g? How does lorawan interoperate with Wi Fi, you know, more broadly, how does it lorawan interoperate with cellular, because we're seeing customers very frequently deploying these technologies together, any IoT solution that you look at if it's comprehensive, as multiple different connectivity technologies. And as a developer, I want to be able to pick and choose from the toolkit according to the specific problem I'm trying to solve. And that typically means I want to use Wi Fi and I want to use 5g, how can I do satellite in some instances, and so all of these technologies interlinking and working well together is a critical, critical goal of law man is an ecosystem. And I think we've made a massive amount of progress there. Very often we're seeing lore around provide the in building infill to a 5g network, helping compensate for some five G's propagation challenges. 5g is a fantastic technology, but it does have some limitations in terms of its ability to penetrate deep concrete walls. We're very often seeing Wi Fi and or when used in conjunction particularly Building scenarios, smart cities scenarios. And so that level of interoperability is something we drive ecosystem level. So we work closely with the wireless broadband Alliance, for example. And it's something we drive with individual customers as well finding out what they're trying to do and making sure that the lorawan standard reflects that needs reflects that desire for interoperability.
Sure. Okay. Okay, interesting. And perhaps moving into a more industrial setting, how integral is lorawan in the journey towards industry 4.0,
I think lorawan is going to play a critical part in that transition. And I think really, it's industry 4.0 is, is quite a European term, but it's a it's a global concept. And that's the, you know, the ability to, to drive, greater efficiency. And greater efficiency, you know, generally means producing more from less, which has the happy byproduct of also mitigating the environmental impact of much of what we're doing lorwyn as a technology is a critical enabler. Again, for the same reasons, as I mentioned, in Smart City, I want to do it now. And I want to get that data, you know, in a cost effective way. I i've through the course of my career, dealt with a range of extremely in his inhospitable industrial environments, particularly wireless with with Hitachi building the lamotta platform. And pulling cable through these environments to wire sensors is a non starter. Cellular technologies great though they are very often can't cope with the penetration issues in steel mills, and similar horrible radio environments. But one of the really critical aspects of law around is cost. And that's cost both in terms of the actual physical device that cost in terms of power budget, because in an industrial setting, I might be able to reach up into a machine and place a sensor. But I don't want to go back and replace the battery on that sensor every year. In fact, if I have to the cost of doing that, may well dissipate any financial benefit I'm getting from that specific data point. So the availability of easy to deploy cost effective and power efficient devices using euro and I think is an absolutely critical enabler, along with a whole handful of other technologies as well, I think it's, it's, it's, it would be foolish for any single provider in IoT to claim, you know, their technology solves all of the problem is, you know, all the time. The IoT is a jigsaw. But you're aware there's a key part of that jigsaw in the industrial context.
Sure. Okay. Okay. And centralised networks, such as narrowband IoT have struggled to scale what and we've seen as a consequence, we've seen a bit bit of a boom in private 5g networks. Can you discuss a little bit more about this landscape and, and perhaps the differences between centralised and distributed networks?
Yeah. And I think, you know, some of the challenges of IoT, as far as centralised networks are concerned are quite clear now. And I say this advisedly, having been in the solar industry in the early days of IoT, or what was then called telematics and machine to machine. The challenge with centralised networks is that the economics of a centralised network fundamentally don't apply to IoT. And I'll explain that statement because it's quite broad reaching one, when I build my cellular business, and I spent many years working with Telefonica right to a building that selling the business to do a number of things. But I'm primarily building that cellular business to serve his customers, people with phones that we walk around with, who generate very high revenue streams, and very high margin revenue streams. And that means that I can afford to spend lots of money on care and billing systems, etc, etc. The challenge that cellular operators have often faced in IoT is that they're taking that cost base and amortising it across a broader base of devices set another way, they are charging IoT devices for services that they don't use. And the end customer is paying that cost. I think there have been a number of operators who set out specifically to build IoT dedicated networks, but even then, the centralised switching infrastructure and the centralised it functions, very often centralised billing functions, that cost structure does not lend itself to a highly cost efficient model. And so, creating a technology like door when which which is operating in the industrial and scientifical Medical band, which means as I said earlier, I don't have to licence the spectrum. That flexibility means that I can pick and choose as a customer, what I need and what I want to spend money on and what I can afford. And in some instances that lead leads to a very lean implementation where you've literally got a network server application server in the cloud, such as the the AWS product announced recently, and I've got cost effective gateways around me and I've got, you know, an IT manager managing that infrastructure. And that's a fundamentally different cost base from a centralised network. Now, in other use use cases, centralised networks are key. And so in Laura When we have now around just shy of 99 countries with around 150 operators, offering public network services using your webcam. Now, the cost of that infrastructure and cost of those networks, again, because the range of lorawan is fundamentally lower than cellular networks, and the cost structure of those companies because they've built themselves around IoT, and built themselves around a low cost model is fundamentally different from cellular operators, and so they're able to support it. But as with all things, I'll go back to what I said earlier, interoperability is key. It's not for us as technology providers to decide how customers use our technology, it's for us to provide a toolkit that is flexible and easy to use. And so where customers want to use lorawan, in conjunction with cellular, that's absolutely what they should be able to do. And that's what they can do today. And interleave, those centralised networks and those distributed networks in a way that doesn't create massive overhead that allows me to ignore actually really where the data is coming from, whether it's coming from a device that's connecting Overlord, where whether that device has moved into cellular coverage area, and it's connecting over cellular, I shouldn't have to care as a customer, I should just be able to get the data. And so that's how, you know, that's how we tend to think about centralised and decentralised you know, at the end of the day, that's our problem to solve that if there are any gaps between those those technologies. That's our problem to solve as faithful providers to our ecosystem.
Sure, I did indeed. And perhaps just to round up, Alice, there's been a fair bit of new news coming out of some tech in the last week to a fortnight and has been a collaboration with Alpha Omega European developer of IoT metering solutions. And also, today with a company called Digital matter, a supplier of GPS and IoT hardware and device management software. Can Can you tell us a little bit more about those collaborations and the how's and the whys behind?
Yeah, sure. I
mean, both of those are very interesting examples of really key use cases for us in the case of digital matter. So what Digital Marketer is built is a tracker that uses a product that we released over the course of last year actually called Laura edge. And what Laura edge is, is a product that's designed to both take advantage of the strengths of Laura, when in terms of low cost and range, but also really something that we spent a number of years building to target another really big unmet need. And that's the need for low power location, I need to be able to in many, many, many use cases, not just logistics use cases, I need to know where it is, as well as what it's doing. And I need to know where it is, you know, and the it could be a hot cow within a herd of 1000 cows, it could be a box, in a distribution system, it could be an asset in the factory. And what Laura edge does is provide an extremely low power way of locating that asset, leveraging GPS, and leveraging Wi Fi. So unlike traditional trackers that use GPS, you know full on, Laura edge uses GPS satellites, but it does it in such a way that the power consumed within that location fixes many 10s of times lower than you would you would require for GPS. The reason that that's important is, again, within asset tracking systems, such as the ones that digital matter of targeting, I want to be able to track everything, I want to know where it is. And I want to know where it is for a long time. And I don't want to go and have to put another battery into each device every, you know, three or four months. And I need to be able to have a low cost solution, if I'm going to track every single one of 200,000 pallets in my in my system. So they produced a product called Gabby edge, it takes Laura edge, it integrates it into a product, it's got some nice packaging, it's highly robust. And that's a product that they're using to target. I think distribution logistics in general, there have been a number of other customers building very similar solutions over the course the last few months or more edge itself I think is really going to change the game a little bit as far as IoT solutions that leverage location. Now alpha is COVID different into the spectrum alpha is very much a one of the use cases that Laura was built to address. And that is monitoring, utility consumption, and specifically connecting smart metres, regardless of where those smart metres were. One of the driving forces behind the early days of sic Leo's innovation of Laura was how do I get 30 feet below the surface to a metre that's encapsulated in concrete to extract the data from that metre. Because if I can, my connected metering solution and the cost saving it generates for me as a utility, even up to an including the ability to price based on usage for individual users, all of that for naught. Because if I can't get the data, I can't actually deliver the service. And so what Alfa has done is take lorawan integrated into a metering solution to support their customers in rapidly deploying connected metering solutions that allow them to Save on manpower, but also, like I said, you know, the closer that we can get to pricing, utilities like electricity and water and gas, based on their availability and based on the nature of the individual customer, again, that drives us towards more efficiency, which in turn reduces the environmental impact that we're having through energy consumption. And that's the problem alpha is targeting. And as I said many ways, in many ways, that's kind of what Laura was initially invented to do. So it's as you'd expect an extraordinarily effective solution for that use case.
Okay. Okay, fantastic. And that is just about all we've got time for today. But it's it's a absolute, fast paced and fascinating marketplace. And it was so it was great to to find out a bit more about it and and what semtech doing in the space so very much appreciate your time talking to us today.
You're welcome. josephian pleasure. Thanks for thanks for taking the time as well.
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