CEVA, NextG-Com to offer integrated LTE Cat-M1 and Cat-NB1 offerings for IoT applications

CEVA Inc., a licensor of signal processing IPs for smarter, connected devices, and NextG-Com Limited (NextG-Com), unveiled Thursday two pre-integrated narrowband LTE solutions designed to simplify the development of Cat-M1 and Cat-NB1 (NB-IoT) modems for cost-sensitive Internet of Things (IoT) applications.

The solutions incorporate the recently introduced CEVA-X1 single-core IoT processor together with NextG-Com’s ALPSLite-M Cat-M1 or ALPSLite-NB Cat-NB1 protocol stacks, in a highly compact and power-efficient manner.

Addressing the cost-sensitive nature of cellular IoT devices, the CEVA-X1 is capable of handling the full DSP and CPU processing loads for these modems, eliminating the requirement for a CPU controller in the system.

Furthermore, the solutions have been carefully optimized to ensure smallest memory footprint, minimizing the requirements for costly embedded flash and static RAM. Ensuring maximum power efficiency for long life cellular IoT applications such as asset trackers or smart meters, the CEVA-X1 incorporates dedicated NB-IoT instructions, allowing it to operate at a clock speed of less than 100MHz for a complete Cat-NB1 solution.

CEVA partners with semiconductor companies and OEMs to create power-efficient, intelligent and connected devices for a range of end markets, including mobile, consumer, automotive, industrial and IoT. Its ultra-low-power IPs for vision, audio, communications and connectivity include comprehensive DSP-based platforms for LTE/LTE-A/5G baseband processing in handsets, infrastructure and machine-to-machine devices, computer vision and computational photography for any camera-enabled device, audio/voice/speech and ultra-low power always-on/sensing applications for multiple IoT markets.

For connectivity, it offers widely adopted IPs for Bluetooth (low energy and dual mode), Wi-Fi (802.11 a/b/g/n/ac up to 4×4) and serial storage (SATA and SAS).

“Cellular IoT offers huge potential in terms of the breadth of applications it will enable and the massive global scale on which these devices can be deployed,” said Denis Bidinost, chief executive officer of NextG-Com. “Our partnership with CEVA brings together their dedicated IoT processor with fully-optimized implementations of our Cat-M1 and Cat-NB1 protocol stacks to significantly simplify the integration of narrowband LTE connectivity into cost-sensitive, power-optimized IoT product designs.”

“At CEVA, we’re at the forefront of LTE and 5G modem innovation, and the only end-to-end DSP supplier for cellular in the industry today, said Michael Boukaya, vice president and general manager, Wireless Business Unit at CEVA. “With the recent introduction of our single-core CEVA-X1 IoT processor, we leveraged this expertise to address the cellular IoT space and help drive this technology forward. Together with NextG-Com, we can offer our customers pre-integrated, dedicated solutions for low data rate LTE connectivity in any IoT device, from asset trackers through to wearalone wearables.”


IoT Innovator Newsletter

Get the latest updates and industry news in your inbox! Enter your email address and name below to be the first to know.

Name