Seamless collaboration in smart homes with Matter and Wi-Fi

The evolution of smart home technology is based on a key principle: interoperability. It is critical to ensure that smart home IoT solutions adhere to industry standards such as Matter and Wi-Fi, and are compatible with public platforms such as AWS and Azure. This approach ensures ease of use, promotes secure communication, promotes energy efficiency and expands compatibility.

Industry standards like Matter and Wi-Fi form the backbone of the smart home ecosystem. Matter’s goal is to establish a unified connectivity standard for a variety of smart home devices. These standards enable seamless communication between devices, creating a unified smart home environment where users can control multiple devices through a single platform.

Matter and Thread enhancements come from the Matter interoperability standard and the Thread protocol. Matter 1.2 introduces new device types and improves interoperability and user experience. Thread enables direct communication with devices, ensuring seamless support for various types of products and applications.

Now IoT products equipped with Ultra-Low Power (ULP) Wi-Fi can extend battery life by 2 to 4 times, revolutionizing battery life while maintaining interoperability with existing access points in homes and simplifying the installation and deployment of new IoT devices.

For example, Matter’s certified solutions powered by InnoPhase IoT’s Wi-Fi platform enable rapid time-to-market with interoperable IoT products tailored for smart locks, smart lighting, access control, smoke detectors and air quality sensors.

The role of public platforms like AWS and Azure is to offer robust cloud services that are key to smart home IoT solutions. The use of these platforms enables advanced features such as real-time monitoring, automatic control and predictive maintenance. Compatibility with these public platforms ensures that smart home devices integrate seamlessly into the larger ecosystem of connected services, which is essential to creating consistent user experiences.

Artificial intelligence at the sensor edge: The rapid development of artificial intelligence has opened up new possibilities in smart homes using matter. Local AI computing at the edge eliminates the need to send data over the network for cloud computing. Instead, the algorithms use data and computing power generated by the device, allowing calculations to be performed close to where the data is collected.

Ultra-low power Wi-Fi: a revolutionary development

A significant advancement in smart home technology is the advent of ultra-low power (ULP) Wi-Fi capabilities. These improvements result in a 2-4x increase in battery life for IoT devices, significantly increasing their service life. This disruption particularly impacts battery-powered smart home devices such as sensors, locks and alarms, where frequent battery replacement can be a pain.

Connect directly to the cloud: BLE and Zigbee devices require a gateway router to connect to the cloud via Wi-Fi/Ethernet. Direct cloud connectivity eliminates the need for a bridge/router if devices have integrated Wi-Fi, allowing them to connect directly using existing access points in the home. This direct-to-cloud connectivity simplifies installation and provides easy interoperability with the numerous access points deployed in smart homes.

Increased security measures remain paramount in the field of IoT. Unsecured or poorly secured devices pose a threat to the entire smart home network. Modern security technologies, including secure boot to alert users of a compromised BIOS, built-in encryption accelerators for secure data transfer, and support for secure protocols such as SSL/HTTPS, minimize this risk.

InnoPhase IoT pioneers ultra-low power Wi-Fi IoT solutions and offers products, SoCs, modules and reference designs. For example, the Talaria TWO wireless platform includes embedded microcontrollers and offloads Matter protocols and Wi-Fi stacks onto embedded ARM microcontrollers, enabling IoT applications to run efficiently without compute or memory constraints. InnoPhase IoT application development kits help develop system-level power management in collaboration with silicon partners such as ST Microelectronics, Nuvoton, Ingenic and others.

Achieving seamless interoperability in smart homes is crucial to creating a seamless, user-friendly experience. By choosing IoT solutions that adhere to industry standards and promote interoperability, consumers can enjoy greater ease of use, secure communications, energy efficiency and broad compatibility. These principles will continue to drive innovation and improve smart home experiences around the world.

Deepal Mehta is Senior Director of Marketing and Business Development at InnoPhase IoT.

Editor’s note: Innophase IoT is one of 200 exhibitors appearing at Sensors Converge 2024 at booth 917 on June 25-26 in Santa Clara. Plan to join thousands of design engineers to see Innophase IoT along with other companies showcasing a variety of sensor technologies, IoT, embedded solutions and much more. Conference sessions and speaker presentations will cover a wide range of topics, including autotechnology, flexible MEMS sensors, women in engineering, upcoming chip research, and more. Register online and use code HAMBLEN to receive a FREE Expo Hall Pass or $200 off VIP and conference passes.