Mountain View, CA. CEVA Inc., a licensor of signal processing IP for smart connected devices, today announced that Sanechips Technology Co. Ltd. (previously named ZTE Microelectronics Technology Co. Ltd.) has licensed the CEVA-X1 IoT processor for its Narrowband-Internet of Things (NB-IoT) product, the RoseFinch7100. Sanechips leveraged the CEVA-X1 to develop an area- and power-optimized NB-IoT solution that is capable of delivering on the promise of long-life, low-cost cellular connectivity for IoT devices.
Demonstrating its commitment to NB-IoT, Sanechips recently took part in the first large scale field test of NB-IoT using its precommercial RoseFinch chipset. The trial, organized by China Mobile, tested the network of the entire mobile chain including core network, terminals, and apps and was reported to have been successful in every aspect.
“NB-IoT is set to dominate long-range IoT connectivity on a global scale, and Sanechips is proud to be at the forefront of this revolution,” said Zhou Jin, marketing director of Sanechips. “Closely collaborating with CEVA ensures we develop best-in-class products like the RoseFinch7100 that will enable mass market adoption of this technology. The CEVA-X1 IoT processor delivers exceptional performance within the stringent power and cost constraints of NB-IoT devices.”
“We are delighted to announce our collaboration with Sanechips for their NB-IoT chipset designs,” said Michael Boukaya, vice president and general manager, Wireless Business Unit at CEVA. “As the only end-to-end DSP provider for cellular, we leveraged our unique expertise to ensure our CEVA-X1 processor meets and exceeds the performance requirements of NB-IoT. This license deal with Sanechips represents a strong endorsement of our IoT processor for this new and exciting market.”
RoseFinch7100, the first commercial NB-IoT single-chip from Sanechips that integrates the low power/high performance CEVA-X1 DSP IP for baseband, will be released in September 2017. This single chip has been designed for cellular LPWA with low sleep current (2 μA) and voltage (2 V) to provide longer battery life.
CEVA-X1 is a hybrid DSP and microcontroller processor targeted for a range of endpoints and IoT hub devices, capable of handling both the protocol stack and physical layer for M2M. The CEVA-X1 is suitable for a variety of use cases and workloads, including LTE Cat-NB1 (NB-IoT) and Cat-M1, Sigfox, LoRa, 802.11n, 802.11ah, Bluetooth, BLE, and ZigBee/Thread It offers positioning and motion-sensing functions including GNSS (GPS, Beidou, GLONASS, Galileo), fusion of multiple indoor positioning and activity sensors, voice activation, and sound processing. CEVA-X1 contains specialized instructions to optimize overall system power, performance, and chip area for baseband channel coding/decoding functions, as well as fusion of multiple always-on sensors. Thanks to these optimizations, five to ten year single battery operation at a very low cost is achievable.