Chipmakers support Amazon Sidewalk wireless network

Amazon has developed a new way for neighbors to stay connected by developing a new shared wireless network for IoT home consumer devices. First announced last fall, Amazon has released a little more information about the Amazon Sidewalk shared network, which is designed to make devices work better inside and outside your home.

As homes continue to become more connected, Sidewalk tackles the frustration that many consumers face daily when they can’t connect or they’re out of wireless network range. Adding to the problem is the mix of wireless protocols that the different devices support.

The low-band network, consisting of bridge devices, including select Echo and Ring devices,  as well as future Sidewalk-enabled devices, works by sharing a small portion of each neighbor’s bandwidth. It supports multiple protocols including Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), the 900-MHz spectrum (LoRa), and other frequencies to simplify new device setup, extend the low-bandwidth working range of devices, and help devices stay online and up-to-date even if they are outside the range of home Wi-Fi. It also comes equipped with multiple layers of security and privacy.

Image: Semtech

A big part of Sidewalk’s benefits is keeping your connected services running like receiving motion alerts from security cameras or keeping your smart lights on at the edge of the driveway even if your Wi-Fi goes down. In the future, Sidewalk-enabled devices could help find pets or valuables, deliver smart security and lighting, and provide diagnostics for appliances and tools, said Amazon.

There is no charge to customers, said Amazon, and the more neighbors that participate, the stronger the network becomes. Sidewalk will be available later this year.

Amazon Sidewalk is a very long-term 10-year-plus project, said Jamie Siminoff, founder & chief inventor of Ring, acquired by Amazon in 2018, during his keynote at Silicon Labs’ Works With 2020 virtual smart home developer conference. “The invention comes from something that has been in neighborhoods for forever, which is sharing. It allows for a network that benefits all of them.”

Siminoff said Sidewalk is about connectivity. “Connecting your device to the internet, so as soon as that device powers up wherever it is, it’s now going to immediately connect and that’s what I think is the big difference with Sidewalk versus the other protocols that are out there.”

“We’re just starting but it does need to interoperate with other protocols. But it’s not just about protocols, it’s about chips.”

“Changing a protocol over the air (OTA) is not that hard, but changing a chip is not that easy, and so we’re working on standard chips,” he added. “The standards are out there and being able to say, ‘what’s on this set of products I’m going to OTA it or flash it at the factory with Sidewalk and these I’m going to put Z-Wave on it.’ That’s totally fine because there are lots of different use cases out there.”

“If we can just provide connectivity to an IoT device, and guarantee a developer if you put this SDK on this chip, when it gets power you can see it and you can talk to it, I think that is so powerful. It’s our total focus for Sidewalk,” he said.

Chipmaker partners

To reach these levels of connectivity it will require a wide range of new chips. Several chipmakers are already on-board and have announced that they are working with Amazon on the Sidewalk platform. These include Semtech, Silicon Labs, and Texas Instruments.

LoRa won the day for low power wide area network (LPWAN) applications with Semtech Corp.’s LoRa devices providing long range, low-bandwidth connectivity for the indoor/outdoor smart home products. By using Semtech’s low-power LoRa platform, the Amazon Sidewalk network can extend the range of a customer’s home network to connect both outdoor and indoor, low-bandwidth smart home products.

These products can range from smart lights and smart irrigation to pet trackers and sensors for asset tracking, enabling these devices to work out of the box with extended connectivity and battery life, said Semtech.

“The collaboration with Amazon solidifies that LoRa is the de facto platform for IoT LPWAN applications and expands LoRa to new consumer applications,” said Mohan Maheswaran, Semtech’s president and CEO, in a statement.

Silicon Labs also announced a collaboration with Amazon to provide its EFR Wireless Gecko Series products to support sub-GHz and Bluetooth Low Energy protocols. The EFR32 Wireless Gecko SoCs provide multiprotocol support, including Bluetooth Low Energy, Zigbee, Thread, and proprietary wireless connectivity.

The wireless solution will enable developers to create IoT products with encrypted cloud communication, no matter which protocol is used, said Silicon Labs.

Silicon Lab’s latest additions to the Wireless Gecko family is the Series 2 platform, which target line-powered devices. The new EFR32MG21 SoCs support multi-protocol, Zigbee, Thread, and Bluetooth, while the new EFR32BG21 SoCs are enabled for Bluetooth Low Energy and Bluetooth mesh.

Texas Instruments Inc. also is working with Amazon, enabling developers to build applications that leverage the Sidewalk protocol and Bluetooth Low Energy with its range of low-power, multi-band devices. TI announced the suite of devices supporting Sidewalk include the CC1352R wireless microcontroller (MCU), which supports sub-1 GHz and Bluetooth Low Energy, the CC1352P wireless MCU, which provides an integrated +20 dBm power amplifier (PA) for an extended range solution, and the CC2652P multi-protocol 2.4-GHz wireless MCU with integrated PA. For a single-band solution, developers can use the CC1312R wireless MCU for 900 MHz or CC2642R wireless MCU for Bluetooth Low Energy.

“These devices enable developers to build applications that leverage the Sidewalk protocol as well as Bluetooth Low Energy for easy commissioning or over-the-air firmware updates,” said Casey O’Grady, product marketing manager, TI, in a blog. “TI’s sub-1 GHz devices offer low power FSK [frequency shift keying] modulation technology, which has high spectral efficiency enabling high-density, low-cost applications.”

TI also offers a Sidewalk-ready development kit, the SimpleLink multiband CC1352R wireless MCU LaunchPad SensorTag kit. It includes integrated environmental and motion sensors with low-power sub-1 GHz and Bluetooth Low Energy wireless connectivity. With this development kit and TI’s CC1352 software development kit, O’Grady said you can build a sub-1 GHz or Bluetooth Low Energy application, and in the future leverage Bluetooth Low Energy via a mobile app to load the Sidewalk image.