Matter is a single unified connection standard for smart home, residential, and commercial buildings.
Matter aims to provide consumers with a better experience and reduce the workload of developers, and has gradually attracted the attention of manufacturers and users. This article will show you the development of Matter technology and the solutions introduced by Nordic in related applications.
Completely change the new standard of the smart home application ecology
Throughout today’s IoT and smart home applications, the smart home industry has grown tremendously over the last decade, with an influx of wireless connected smart devices that automate and facilitate family life, such as internet-enabled loudspeakers, bulbs, and louvers, all of which can be remotely activated through smartphones or dedicated home assistants. It is estimated that there are about 175 million people using smart home devices around the world today, and it is expected that there will be more than 13 billion smart home devices in use by 2025.
However, even with all the latest devices and innovations, end users are still confused and frustrated when trying to have their devices communicate, interconnect, and work together reliably. Many products developed by different manufacturers often have problems in series connection, which will reduce the rate of user adoption, increase the difficulty of innovation, and make interoperability impossible.
With the development of home automation and the smart home industry over many years, various connection standards have emerged, including Z-Wave and Zigbee, and protocols such as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi have also played an important role. Each protocol has opened up a niche market, but no protocol can successfully become the default or main standard of the smart home market, which is reflected in the fragmentation of consumers' experience at the device level.
In view of this, the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA) has joined forces with the world's largest brands, such as Amazon, Apple, Google, and other companies to initiate and develop the Matter standard. This centralized standardization will ensure that manufacturers, designers, consumers, and all of society will benefit from accessible technologies. At present, more than 220 companies and 2,100 individuals have participated in the formulation of the Matter standard. With the support of many large technology companies in the world, this new unified connection standard will completely change the ecology of smart home applications.
Matter technology that improves security and interoperability
From the point of view of device-to-device protocols, there is not much difference between the Matter standard and other standards in concept, but the main difference lies in the adoption, support, and motivation of the industry, because it involves all global and important ecosystems, which is one of the main differences. Especially by 2021, the number of companies integrating Matter into their products was increasing greatly, which will increase the interoperability choices of end customers, and Matter may become the de facto standard of smart homes.
Another key difference of Matter is that it is based on Internet Protocol (IP), which can achieve scalability and addressability, and bring the Internet into IoT devices. Matter can use standards such as Thread, Wi-Fi, or Ethernet to transmit messages, and BLE can be used to simplify the debugging of devices. Wi-Fi can be used for low-bandwidth and high-bandwidth applications, and it can also be connected to devices like cellular Internet of Things in the future. The Matter specification also supports bridging between technologies to ensure interoperability. By bridging devices, users will be able to keep existing devices and continue to promote the interoperability of Matter.
Matter aims to ensure the security and privacy of devices and information, while still being easy to use. Matter is built on the basis of ensuring the use of fully transparent open standards to connect IoT devices with Matter. Matter's strict security and privacy principles provide a security benchmark for developers to protect new IoT devices and protect data and information transactions. In addition, the Matter protocol and data model cover the core operational functions from devices to mobile and cloud communications.
The "Multi-Admin" function of the Matter specification will enable connected devices to be easily controlled by multiple smart home ecosystems. Multi-Admin frees customers from the walled garden of a single supplier, allowing them to mix and match freely according to their preferences. For example, you can choose to use either Apple Siri or Amazon Alexa voice assistants, and even use both to control the Nest thermostat at the same time.
Software and hardware required for smart home applications
Nordic Semiconductor’s investment in the smart home market has a long history, as Nordic sees different solutions in each ecosystem, which poses a challenge for Nordic both as a manufacturer and as a customer, and, unfortunately, a sense of confusion and frustration for end consumers.
With the support of Matter and all its leading ecosystems, Nordic believes that Matter has the potential to meet the needs of the smart home market. Nordic Semiconductor is a leading supplier of Bluetooth LE and Thread, and these technologies will also be used in the Matter specification. Therefore, technically, it will be of great significance to provide support for Matter for Nordic devices.
Nordic provides software and hardware for Matter developers. The most recommended ones are the nRF52840 or nRF5340 system-on-chip (SoC) and development kits for these two devices, including the nRF Connect SDK available online free of charge. The SDK includes Matter's open source implementation, which is available through GitHub and optimized for Nordic SoC. It also includes examples of door locks, light bulbs, switches, and temperature and humidity detection, which provide users with a starting point and further simplifies the development of new products based on Matter. Nordic also cooperated with Google, Assa Abloy, Eve, and Leedarson to create a smart home demonstration, showing voice control, door locks, thermostats, and light bulbs based on Matter. Nordic also provides many free resources on YouTube, Youku, and DevZone.
Highly integrated multi-protocol SoC
The nRF52840 system-on-chip (SoC) introduced by Nordic is a multi-protocol Bluetooth 5.2 SoC with full protocol concurrency capability, which can simultaneously support Bluetooth Low Energy, Bluetooth Mesh, NFC, Thread and Zigbee, 802.15.4, ANT, and 2.4 GHz proprietary protocol stacks. nRF52840 SoC is the most advanced member of the nRF52 series, which can meet the challenges of requiring protocol concurrency, rich peripherals, and complex applications. It also provides sufficient memory for flash memory and RAM, which are the necessary conditions for demanding applications.
NRF52840 is based on the 32-bit ARM® Cortex™-M4 CPU with a floating-point unit, and its main frequency is 64 MHz. The built-in NFC-A tag can be used for simplified pairing and payment solutions. The chip has a built-in ARM TrustZone® CryptoCell cryptographic algorithm unit, which can efficiently perform cryptographic algorithm tasks independently of the CPU. It has many digital peripherals and interfaces, such as high-speed SPI and QSPI interfaces, which are used to connect external flash memory and displays, and PDM and I2S connect digital microphones and audio. In addition, there is a full-speed USB device, which is used for data transmission and charging the battery as a power source. Through a precise on-chip adaptive power management system, extremely low power consumption is achieved.
Another nRF5340 SoC from Nordic is a dual-core Bluetooth 5.2 SoC that can support Bluetooth Low Energy, Bluetooth Mesh, NFC, Thread, and Zigbee. NRF5340 is the world's first wireless connection SoC with two Arm® Cortex®-M33 processors. It has two flexible processors, advanced functions, and high-speed SPI, QSPI, USB, and an operating temperature of up to 105°C. It also combines higher performance, memory, and integration while minimizing static current, making it an ideal choice for low-power audio, professional lighting, advanced wearable devices, and other complex IoT applications.
The application processor is also optimized for performance, and can run at a clock frequency of 128M or 64 MHz using the voltage-frequency adjustment function. It has 1 MB flash memory, 512 KB RAM, a floating point unit (FPU), an 8 KB bidirectional associative cache, and DSP instructions. The main frequency of the network processor is 64 MHz, and it is optimized for low power consumption and efficiency (101 CoreMark/mA). It has 256 KB flash memory and 64 KB RAM.
Scalable unified software development kit
Nordic's nRF Connect SDK is the software development kit for the nRF5340 SoC, which provides complete solutions for building software development kits for Bluetooth Low Energy, Wi-Fi, cellular IoT, Bluetooth Mesh, Thread, Zigbee, and Matter products, and integrates Zephyr RTOS and a wide range of application examples, application protocols, protocol stacks, libraries, and hardware drivers.
The nRF Connect SDK is a scalable unified software development kit, which is used to build products based on all nRF52, nRF53, nRF70, and nRF91 series wireless devices from Nordic. It provides a scalable framework for developers to build size-optimized software for devices with limited memory and powerful and complex software for more advanced devices and applications.
In order to develop Bluetooth Low Energy, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth Mesh, Thread, Zigbee, and Matter products, the nRF Connect SDK contains all necessary software, including the protocol stack. The nRF Connect SDK also provides a unique integration of the HomeKit accessory development kit for developing products using HomeKit over Thread and HomeKit over Bluetooth Low Energy. It is a highly optimized solution that allows battery-powered products to run the HomeKit Attachment Protocol (HAP) and application firmware on a single chip at the same time.
The nRF Connect SDK provides a single code base for all devices and software components from Nordic, which simplifies the porting of modules, libraries, and drivers from one application to another, thus reducing the development time. By enabling developers to choose and select the necessary software components for their applications, high memory efficiency can be guaranteed.
nRF5340 DK is the development kit for the nRF5340 SoC, which contains all the tools needed for single board development. This development kit supports product development using a variety of wireless protocols. It supports Bluetooth Low Energy and has the functions of a high data throughput of 2 Mbps, Advertising Extensions, and Long Range. Mesh protocols such as Bluetooth Mesh, Thread, and Zigbee can run simultaneously with Bluetooth Low Energy, which enables smart phones to provision, provision, configure, and control Mesh nodes, and also supports NFC, ANT, 802.15.4, and 2.4 GHz proprietary protocols.
nRF5340 DK can use all analog and digital interfaces and GPIO ports through headers and edge connectors. This kit is compatible with Arduino Uno Rev3 hardware, which means that it can be easily interfaced with external device shields.
Conclusion
The application of Matter technology is promoting the development of IoT and smart home, enabling devices of different brands to communicate and interact, improving the interoperability between IoT and smart home, and improving the convenience and experience of users. Nordic has launched a highly integrated SoC supporting Matter technology and related development kits, which will speed up the product development of customers and actively seize the IoT and smart home market.
