Freescale, Nivis to Create Wireless Platform for Industrial, Commercial Applications
October 27, 2008 // Published as a news service by IHS
Freescale Semiconductor and Nivis LLC plan to combine their respective technologies to provide a wired-to-wireless platform for commercial and industrial sensor mesh networks.
The combined hardware/software platform includes sensor interface, radio module, router/gateway, security manager and advanced network manager capabilities for emerging wireless standards in the industrial and commercial sector.
The Freescale and Nivis development platform is designed to provide developers with a way to evaluate ISA 100.11a, WirelessHART (highway addressable remote transducer) and 6Lo wireless personal area network (WPAN) stacks on Freescale microcontrollers (MCUs) and embedded processors.
It enables device developers to create wireless sensor mesh network tools with minimal effort, expense and time to market, the companies said. Nivis contributes the software and Freescale provides the embedded hardware options.
The platform is based on the Freescale portfolios of ColdFire MCUs, Power Architecture processors and processors based on ARM cores.
"Working together, Freescale and Nivis are delivering a comprehensive wireless sensor network solution designed to provide an exceptional range of hardware and software application completeness," said Aiden Mitchell, director of industrial and multimarket MCUs at Freescale.
"The combination of Freescale silicon and development boards with Nivis wireless connectivity software provides developers with a best-in-class platform solution designed to drive innovation in the industrial wireless market," Mitchell said.
With the release of the joint Freescale and Nivis platform, device developers can purchase reference designs from both companies or buy components to build their own end-to-end final wireless tool off the shelf with both Nivis software and Freescale components.
Source: Freescale Semiconductor Inc.