1 | GCF certification sets Altair to “revolutionise cellular IoT”
Cellular IoT chipset maker Altair Semiconductor, owned by Sony Corporation, has announced its lab has been officially authorised by the Global Certification Forum (GCF). The GCF quality mark for interoperability is considered to be a gold standard for the cellular test industry.
Altair said the certification will make it the “standout player” for cellular IoT chips, covering both LTE-M and NB-IoT based low-power wide-area technolgies. It puts it in position to “revolutionise” the cellular IoT market, it said.
Levana Asraf Fouks, director of system validation and customer support at Altair, said: “Altair is looking to revolutionise cellular IoT connectivity across the world. We shall use our authorised lab to maintain interoperability with 3GPP and certification requirements while keeping the highest degree of quality of our products.”
Asraf Fouks added: “By combining conformance and interoperability tests undertaken in laboratories on multiple live networks, GCF’s authorisation of the Altair’s laboratory will make us a standout player in the global marketplace.”
Altair’s claims its cellular IoT chips have the lowest power consumption and longest battery life of any in the market. They feature a hardware-based security framework and features including integrated MCU and GNSS.
2 | Rockwell joins new ‘global’ alliance on IIoT cyber-security
Rockwell Automation has been announced as a founding member of a new International Society of Automation (ISA) alliance on cyber-security, alongside industry and government agencies. The alliance is seeking to drive standards and best-practice among the industrial set as industrial IoT solutions widen the threat lanscape for enterprises.
The new ISA Global Cybersecurity Alliance has been convened to help secure industrial operations – by advancing “cybersecurity readiness and awareness” in manufacturing and critical infrastructure. The alliance wants to accelerate usage of the consensus-based ISA/IEC 62443 standards, for automation and control system applications. It also wants to foster cyber-skills in manufacturing, and drive compliance across the industry.
Blake Moret, chief executive at Rockwell Automation, said: “Cybersecurity is critical to digital transformation. It’s critical not only for the protection of information and intellectual property but also for the protection of physical assets, the environment and worker safety. Our engagement with the Global Cybersecurity Alliance will be another important step in our efforts to help customers identify and mitigate risks.”
Rockwell Automation has earned ISA/IEC 62443-4-1 certification for its Security Development Lifecycle, which it uses to design security into the lifecycle of its products. The company also recently introduced the first industrial controller to obtain ISA/IEC 62443-4-2 certification.
3 | Portuguese city deploys LoRaWAN for water, waste, parking
The city of Caldas da Rainha in Portugal has deployed a LoRaWAN network from Cisco and Actility to analyse and improve its water, waste management, parking, and traffic flow systems.
The city has installed sensors variously to generate and gather real-time data about certain public infrastructure and facilities. The data is transmitted over the LoRaWAN network set down by Actility and Cisco, and made available in a new command center, according to Actility.
Caldas da Rainha has used IoT data to detect and fix leaks in its water system, manage parking and traffic flow of its bus system, and run garbage collection more effectively. Actility pointed to the appropriateness of LoRaWAN to vertically-integrate an array of smart city solutions – “as a low-cost, long-range, highly pervasive, and sustainable solution.”
“What’s even more interesting is its ability to penetrate densely enclosed places, such as concrete buildings and underground areas. This is something that most mobile data connections cannot do alone – and if they can, it can be really costly,” it said.
“LoRaWAN is ideal for cities because it is a horizontal, open standard-based platform that does not require individually implementing multiple proprietary technologies. Cities do not have to invest in different silo-based infrastructures achieving significant cost savings and efficient service delivery at the same time,” said Actility.
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