Internet of Things (IoT) applications are usually constrained by power, size and resources, and are vulnerable to online and physical intrusion. How to provide sufficient performance with little power consumption will be a major challenge for IoT applications. This article will introduce you to Silicon Labs’ low-power Wi-Fi module, an excellent choice when designing IoT products.
Ultra-low power Wi-Fi scheme provides powerful Internet of Things performance simultaneously
IoT applications need to be online at any time, so the Wi-Fi module inside consumes power continuously. The challenge of the IoT Wi-Fi is to provide sufficient performance with little power consumption and few requirements for MIPS, and provide high security at the same time. In view of this, Silicon Labs expands its groundbreaking WF200 Wi-Fi portfolio of modules and transceivers, enabling developers to create end node products with best-in-class power efficiency, superior RF blocking performance and advanced security.
Designed for the specific needs of IoT applications, the WF200 Wi-Fi portfolio cuts Wi-Fi power consumption in half compared to competitive offerings, providing ideal solutions for power-sensitive connected products, including battery-operated IP security cameras, point-of-sale scanners, asset trackers and personal medical devices.
No matter how powerful IoT devices are, security is still the primary consideration in IoT applications. Silicon Labs’s Wi-Fi portfolio provides comprehensive security for IoT applications. The WF200 Wi-Fi portfolio offers an array of built-in security features to protect your IoT devices, including secure boot, secure link and secure debugging, and also offers efficient implementations of industry-standard encryption. In addition to preventing online intrusion, these functions can also prevent malicious code running, SSID/password stealing, and debug port enabling through physical intrusion, to make your terminal devices more secure.
In the past 20 years, Wi-Fi has changed the connectivity of more than 15 billion devices worldwide. However, the key limitation to most Wi-Fi enabled IoT systems is high power consumption. Since Wi-Fi is mainly used to optimize bandwidth, using traditional Wi-Fi in battery-powered applications with limited power consumption is a major challenge.
Designed for low-power IoT applications based on Wi-Fi connection, Wi-Fi devices in the WF200 Wi-Fi portfolio have been optimized for power, providing the lowest power consumption in the industry in transmission, reception and sleep modes. DTIM 3 current lower than 250 μA is realized by low sleep and receiving currents, sleep current of WF200 is lower than 40 μA, transmission current is lower than 160 mA, and receiving current is lower than 48 mA. All these power figures are the best of their kind, ensuring that no matter what circumstances, the WF200 Wi-Fi portfolio can be used to obtain obvious power advantages. Due to the low power consumption of WF200 modules, the battery life of IoT devices adopting this Wi-Fi solution is expected to be prolonged by more than twice.
In order to speed up the development of IoT products, Silicon Labs provides a pre-certified Wi-Fi product - Wi-Fi Xpress modules. Silicon Labs’ Wireless Xpress provides a configuration-based development experience with everything developers need including certified hardware, integrated protocol stacks and easy-to-use tools supported by Silicon Labs Gecko OS IoT operating system.
With the Wi-Fi Xpress modules, designers can connect your products to the cloud without becoming wireless experts, and can use new features including remote access, real-time product performance and usage analysis to complete prototyping within hours.
The Wi-Fi Xpress solution simplifies cloud connectivity through low-power Wi-Fi modules and software, and supports cloud providers including Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure. The integrated Web application supports a browser-based user interface and is suitable for applications requiring direct access to the Internet and remote configuration and update, such as home appliances, wireless sensors, thermostats, IP cameras and health monitoring.
The Wi-Fi radio environment is quite complicated because the market is already saturated with Wi-Fi enabled products. Silicon Labs' solution has excellent radio frequency sensitivity. Even in the face of strong radio frequency interference, it can ensure reliable connection, maintain high data rate with less retransmission, save power consumption and channel capacity, and provide reliable IoT Wi-Fi functions that can adapt to various environments. WF200 and WFM200S Wi-Fi transceivers operate over the temperature range of -40°C to +105°C with automatic compensation to maintain radio frequency calibration and provide excellent performance under harsh environmental conditions.
Silicon Labs’ Wi-Fi modules make full use of the Gecko MCU platform, offering scalability, security, and the most advanced feature set available on a low-power platform, which is specially tailored for the development of modern IoT products. Each device has a connection interface for a large number of Gecko MCU peripheral devices such as Ethernet, SPI, I2C, PWM, ADC and Touch Sense, providing high integration of peripheral devices and application flexibility.
The real value of IoT lies in the data generated by connected products. Silicon Labs combines hardware, software and cloud to reliably provide valuable data and promote innovation in related application industries, thus realizing support for IoT. Zentri cloud platform provides all key elements, which can connect products, create dashboards for management, and monitor products installed on site. Through Zentri cloud platform and equipment management services, higher added value can be provided for IoT applications.