OVERVIEW/SITUATION ANALYSIS

The Internet of Things (IoT) represents a major global opportunity with the potential to add as much as €6 trillion to the global economy by 2025. In particular, the IoT will bring numerous socio-economic and environmental benefits through the improved automation of smart homes and buildings.
IoT devices and networks significantly improve the automation of energy management systems which reduce the energy consumption of assets.
Studies have shown that such energy management systems will provide a typical energy savings of as much as a 27 percent in homes and buildings.

THE CHALLENGE

Most applications demand that IoT devices provide WiFi range in order to be installed in or alongside existing wireless infrastructure.
IoT devices must also be highly secure, ultra-low power, globally interoperable, reliable and cost effective.
Existing IoT wireless technologies has challenges meeting these market needs with range as a primary barrier.
Cascoda Ltd. developed SMARTRange specifically to address this problem. SMARTRange is a disruptive wireless transceiver chip. This architecture dramatically improves receiver efficiency, thereby doubling the range over the existing state-of-the-art, while maintaining ultra-low power consumption and enabling secure, direct internet connectivity.

The Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF) and Thread Group first partnered in 2018 to ensure that OCF's secure application layer was fully compatible with Thread's low-power and scalable IPv6-based wireless mesh network layer.
By combining OCF and Thread in a single, certified and open standards-based solution, OCF over Thread ensures interoperability and security from the application layer to the network layer of IoT devices and applications.
Cascoda is the first company to produce products using OCF over Thread. Cascoda’s accomplishment has been the catalyst to fuel collaboration between OCF and Thread and will help enable future IoT solutions.

Based on proven IoT standards, OCF over Thread leverages open standards, allowing end users to start OCF over Thread with little to no investment and quicker time to market, completing products in as little as six months.
Together, OCF and Thread address both security and interoperability within the IoT, enabling seamless communications between device-to-device and device-to-cloud.
Cascoda has demonstrated live demos of OCF over Thread running on its Chili2 Module, a low-cost, pre-certified IP-based module that pairs the Cascoda CA-8211 transceiver modem with an ARM® Cortex®-M23 TrustZone® microcontroller, providing scalability, security, longer range and lower power.
OCF over Thread has no points of failure, with OCF supporting encrypted communications between devices, using a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) for authentication, and running round-the-clock vulnerability management systems for rapid responsiveness.
Thread networks provide self-healing and reconfiguration when devices are added or removed with simple setup and use.

While the Thread Group focuses on the networking layer and OCF on the application layer, both support low-power, open technologies at the center of their approaches to the IoT, allowing for quick implementation, and the ability to run on small battery devices.
OCF over Thread is designed from the ground up for extremely low power consumption and low latency, enabling battery-operated devices to maintain a permanent connection to the internet.
Cascoda is meeting an important need in the smart home industry by:
Providing range and reliability in excess of Wi-Fi, double that of current state-of-the-art networks.
Achieving ultra-low power consumption, allowing long-life battery or operation from energy harvesting sources.
Significantly reducing equipment, installation and maintenance costs, due to a lower number of routers/nodes (as a result of longer range) and longer battery life.