U‑blox has added a GNSS receiver module to its cellular LTE Cat 1 portfolio. The GNSS receiver in the LENA-R8 is based on the u‑blox M10 platform.
U-blox also introduced the LARA-R6, its smallest LTE Cat 1 module with global coverage. Together, the modules comprise five certified global, multi-regional and regional product variants, simplifying logistics for product developers and increasing design flexibility.
Both modules offer device makers facing imminent 2G and 3G network sunsets a future-proof migration path to 4G technology for data-streaming applications.
Additionally, they offer MQTT Anywhere and MQTT Flex connectivity via u‑blox’s Thingstream platform out of the box, thereby enabling low-power, low-cost connectivity with globally ubiquitous, seamless roaming.
Tracking and Telematics
The LENA-R8 standard-grade module series targets customers in the tracking and telematics markets seeking to minimize costs associated to their bill of material and data charges. The compact module balances cost and performance with single Rx antenna and primarily targets customer deployments in the Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia, and South America regions.
The LENA-R8 supports a broad range of frequency bands with 2G fallback, providing maximum roaming coverage for global tracking applications using a single stock keeping unit (SKU).
A variant of the LENA-R8 series comes with an ultra-low power u‑blox M10 GNSS receiver for high performance asset tracking applications, reducing integration effort and time to market. Making no compromises in terms of GNSS performance, the module can concurrently receive up to four GNSS constellations for maximum position availability.
CellLocate Support
All variants of the LARA-R6 and LENA-R8 family support CellLocate, u‑blox’s cellular network-based location service, for coarse positioning data even in the absence of GNSS signals.
Engineering samples will be available in February.
The GNSS augmentation service provides real-time, verified and scalable high-precision positioning to consumer, industrial and automotive applications.
U-blox has launched its new PointPerfect location service. PointPerfect delivers an advanced GNSS augmentation data service designed from the ground up to be ultra-accurate, ultra-reliable and immediately available.
The service enables the fast-growing demand for high-precision GNSS solutions including autonomous vehicles such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), service robots, machinery automation, micro-mobility and other advanced navigation applications.
Emerging automotive applications include automated driving (AD) and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), lane-accurate navigation and telematics.
Delivered via mobile internet or L-band satellite signals, PointPerfect broadcasts on a continental scale with homogeneous coverage in Europe and the contiguous United States, up to 12 nautical miles off coastlines to any number of end-devices, delivering sub-10-centimeter positioning accuracy and convergence of seconds. It uses the SPARTN messaging format with the lightweight, secure MQTT internet of things (IoT) delivery protocol for a real-time, bandwidth-optimized, cost-efficient solution for mass-market applications.
PointPerfect cooperates smoothly with u-blox positioning and connectivity hardware, providing a one-stop-shop solution from silicon to cloud. Because it is based on the open SPARTN GNSS correction data format, its use is not restricted to a single hardware provider, allowing customers the flexibility to optimize solutions.
PointPerfect is delivered via the Thingstream IoT service delivery platform, an enterprise-grade cloud platform that supports billions of messages. Thingstream provides a self-serve environment where users can manage their device fleet, optimizing cost and performance through flexible and predictable pricing plans.
The service is backed by a full warranty, 99.9% uptime availability and 24/7 reliability. In-house development of all the technological building blocks ensures expert technical support while eliminating any external dependencies that could otherwise lead to delays.
“PointPerfect seamlessly integrates our advanced high accuracy GNSS augmentation service with industry-leading positioning and connectivity hardware,” said Franco de Lorenzo, principal product manager services, u-blox. “Designed for increased flexibility, PointPerfect lowers barriers to adoption and supports scaled-up high precision positioning solutions, even in segments where such solutions would previously have been considered impractical. Moreover, innovative delivery options fully integrated into our easy-to-use Thingstream IoT service delivery platform eliminate complexities and allow users to engage more efficiently, reducing time-to-market.”
U‑blox has launched a commercial internet of things (IoT) Security-as-a-Service offering. Available on both the u‑blox SARA-R4 and SARA-R5 series of LTE-M cellular IoT modules, the service protects data from malicious third parties, both on the device and during transmission from the device to the cloud, u-blox said in a press release.
Both the SARA-R4 and R5 have integrated M8 GNSS receivers.
The IoT Security-as-a-Service provides an out-of-the box onboarding process to cloud IoT platforms to speed up development, shortening time-to-market.
The IoT Security-as-a-Service offering, which is managed via the u‑blox Thingstream service delivery platform, is specifically optimized for low-power, wide-area (LPWA) deployments that use resource-constrained IoT devices. By substantially reducing data overhead and keeping the number of handshakes to a minimum, the service improves power consumption and extends the battery life, a critical metric for most IoT devices.
u-blox acquired Thingstream, an IoT communication-as-a-service provider, in April.
Central to the effectiveness of the solution is a unique symmetric key management system (KMS). Through it, an infinite number of crypto keys can be generated on the fly for each device, rather than having to rely on the storage and management of pre-shared keys (which can add to overall operational complexity and the power budget).
Keys are tied to the hardware and can be triggered from either the module or from the server/cloud, completely eliminating the need to create, deliver, and renew certificates, and bringing significant savings in terms of system cost, operational complexity, and power consumption.
The solution also leverages u‑blox’s Foundation security offering, which comprises fundamental elements that make SARA-R4 and SARA-R5 modules secure by design. These include a unique and immutable device identity that is tied to its root of trust (RoT), which forms the basis for a trusted set of advanced security functionality, including a secure boot mechanism that ensures that the module can only run trusted software. In addition, u‑blox’s proprietary uFOTA feature enables authentication of over-the-air firmware updates.
Among the relevant use cases that u‑blox IoT Security-as-a-Service can support are:
Asset tracking. Data authenticity is essential in such scenarios, as well as secure local storage of collected data and easy secure cloud onboarding. Because tracking devices are usually battery powered, they require extremely energy-efficient secure data transmission.
Connected health/eHealth. In this use case, patient confidentiality is paramount, with only authorized medical staff permitted to access sensitive data. This necessitates a high degree of protection against malware and data tampering.
Industrial monitoring. These solutions need to guarantee the integrity of real-time operational data to increase productivity, avoid downtime, and assure the safety of the workforce.
Building and home automation. Data confidentiality and authenticity need to be maintained, while allowing for data to be shared with trusted stakeholders without compromising customer privacy.
Telematics. In this scenario, the main security risks include denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, device cloning, jamming, etc.
Smart metering. Here, the authenticity of data logged by remote metering units needs to be confirmed to protect billing, and, once trusted communication is established, data transmission needs to be restricted to authorized servers.
“We implemented a true end-to-end concept that protects data from the device to the end user without making it visible to intermediate nodes or platforms, or to service providers. The modules’ symmetric KMS offers engineers a streamlined and scalable alternative to conventional public key infrastructure or pre-shared key arrangements,” says Giovanni Solito, senior product manager, Product Center Services at u‑blox. “And with straightforward onboarding to all the popular cloud IoT platforms, efforts are not taken up by security concerns and operational complexities, but can be focused on speeding up time to market and growing business.”
