STMicroelectronics joins mioty alliance, releases protocol stack

Semiconductor company STMicroelectronics is looking to inspire next-generation Massive IoT applications, which are driven by scale rather than speed, through its support for the mioty standard, which enables highly scalable, long-range and extremely low-power wireless connections.

Joining the mioty alliance, which maintains the specifications and promotes the technology, ST has announced availability of a protocol stack that allows customers to create mioty devices using the STM32WL wireless system-on-chip (SoC). The protocol stack has been developed by Stackforce, a founding member of the mioty alliance and ST Authorized Partner, and is available as a library for direct application integration or firmware, ready to be flashed directly onto the SoC for modem-like use.

“mioty promises to make exciting new Massive IoT applications possible, for instance, to cover a large geographical area,” said Hakim Jaafar, STM32 Wireless Marketing Director, STMicroelectronics. “The mioty stack further strengthens the ecosystem around our STM32WL SoC, which supports various common sub-GHz LPWAN technologies such as LoRaWAN, Sigfox and wM-Bus, and delivers a unique level of integration that saves space, power and time to market.”

mioty sends messages using an advanced telegram-splitting technique, which is recognised and standardised by the European Telecommunication Standards Institute (ETSI). This is designed to ensure extremely short radio transmissions that allow extended operation without the logistical challenges of replacing batteries in Massive IoT networks. Short transmissions also minimise interference with nearby signals and allow many thousands of mioty nodes to co-exist on the same network.

mioty data packets can travel several kilometres in built-up areas and more than 15 km with line of sight, allowing just a few base stations to cover large industrial sites or outdoor areas such as oilfields. In addition, mioty devices can communicate while moving at up to 120 km/h without signal-fading issues, serving applications such as fleet management, asset tracking and theft detection.

“The STM32WL has already proved to be a very powerful platform, especially regarding support for multi-protocol stacks,” said David Rahusen, Managing Director, Stackforce. “We’re thrilled to add mioty, a promising new LPWAN technology, to the interesting portfolio of (multi-)protocol stacks for STM32WL.”

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