Licensor of signal processing platforms and artificial intelligence processors for smarter, connected devices, CEVA, and Nurlink, a fabless IC design company specializing in cellular IoT wireless communications, have announced the introduction of Nurlink’s NK6010 3GPP Rel.14 eNB-IoT System-on-Chip (SoC) powered by the CEVA-Dragonfly NB2 IP solution.
NK6010 is a highly cost and power efficient NB-IoT SoC designed specifically to enable narrowband connectivity in massive IoT devices such as smart meters, wearables, asset trackers and industrial sensors. The SoC, built around the CEVA-Dragonfly NB2 solution, incorporates RF front-end, RF transceiver, cellular baseband, power management unit and application processor, all highly-integrated to minimize the size and cost of the solution.
It supports all NB-IoT frequency bands and major global carriers, for a smooth and rapid certification of devices on any NB-IoT commercial network around the world. The SoC also includes an extremely low-power multi-GNSS subsystem, supporting GPS/Beidou/Galileo/GLONASS global navigation systems, to ensure highly-accurate device tracking and locating, worldwide.
Dr Xiaohua Kong, Nurlink CEO, said: “We developed NK6010 to meet the exceptional demand for NB-IoT chipsets to power the multitude of new use cases and applications that narrowband cellular connectivity serves. The CEVA-Dragonfly NB2 enabled us to massively accelerate our time-to-market by providing many of the key building blocks for our SoC design, already silicon proven and pre-integrated.
“In addition, through the programmable nature of the Dragonfly solution, our engineering team were able to add our innovation during the communication system development and SoC customization. This framework eventually helped us to create a truly differentiated product. Our path from licensing to silicon was achieved in under one year, and we’re now engaged with operators worldwide to certify our SoC.”
Michael Boukaya, Vice President and General Manager of the Wireless Business Unit at CEVA, stated: “NB-IoT has reached critical mass, with more than 60 operators around the world already supporting the standard and dozens more launching coverage imminently. Now the drive towards ultra-low cost NB-IoT chipsets and modules has begun and Nurlink, powered by our CEVA-Dragonfly NB2 IP solution, is one of the early entrants into this fast growing space. We applaud their efforts to reach the market so quickly and look forward to monitoring their success.”
The CEVA-Dragonfly NB2 IP solution is a modular technology, composed of the CEVA-X1 IoT processor, an optimized RF Transceiver, baseband, and a protocol stack to offer a complete Release 14 Cat-NB2 modem IP solution that significantly reduces time-to-market and lowers entry barriers. It is a fully software-configurable solution and can be extended with multi-constellation GNSS and sensor fusion functionality.
The IP includes a reference silicon of the complete modem design, including an embedded CMOS RF transceiver and PA, an advanced digital front-end, physical layer firmware, and a protocol stack (MAC, RLC, PDCP, RRC, and NAS).
As Michael Boukaya said “NB-IoT has reached critical mass, with more than 60 operators around the world” but I was reading on Wikipedia that 149 operators in more than 60 countries are investing in the NB-IoT network technologies