Pioneering Ultra-Low Power Consumption
for Next-Gen IoT Devices
Sony’s Altair dedication to minimizing power consumption stands as a cornerstone of our solution’s advantages, driven by a holistic approach that includes both innovative silicon design and tailored software development.
By engineering our silicon architecture from the ground up specifically for IoT applications, we ensure that our solutions are optimized for ultra-low power consumption, meeting the critical demands of IoT devices. This hardware foundation is complemented by software development focused on leveraging these low-power capabilities, directly addressing the unique requirements of IoT use cases.
Our extensive expertise in cellular IoT and LPWA standards, coupled with a wealth of experience in helping our customers navigating the production and operational challenges inherent in these technologies, further solidifies our position as a leader in the field.
Our solid commitment to the IoT sector is evident in our comprehensive approach, from design and development through to deployment, ensuring that our solutions are not only highly efficient but also robust and tailored to meet the specific needs of the IoT landscape.
Sony Altair’s technology sets the benchmark for low power consumption in IoT devices, achieved through a blend of cutting-edge technical solutions.
At the heart of our approach is the use of advanced silicon processes designed for low clock speeds, which, together with our optimized radio frequency (RF) and physical layer design, minimizes energy use. By focusing on lower frequency Digital Signal Processing (DSP) and accelerator blocks, and adopting architectures that operate efficiently at reduced frequencies, our devices require less power and fewer transistors to perform their tasks.
We further enhance power efficiency through the smart integration of memory, enabling our systems to operate on less power, boot up quicker, and cut down on energy spent on memory tasks.
Further to the design itself, we focus strongly on saving power by using deep sleep modes. In these modes, the device turns off parts it doesn’t need, cutting down power use when it’s not active. This approach helps our IoT devices use very little power during downtime, making them more energy-efficient.
Our firmware is continually refined to fine-tune power usage by trimming down background activities, slashing processing demands, and adopting effective power management strategies. Beyond individual device optimization, we engage in system-level enhancements across the IoT ecosystem, collaborating on network infrastructure, protocols, and software to ensure power savings at every operational level. This comprehensive strategy demonstrates our commitment to advancing IoT technology while prioritizing energy efficiency.
As leaders in the low power IoT field, we understand the value of long battery lifetime for IoT based devices, so we aim to provide the most optimized communication in our chipsets.
Estimating battery lifetime for IoT based device can be challenging, with many parameters to consider, such as rate and size of data transmission, how accessible should the device be for external events, protocol selection, etc. We’ve used our experience in this field to provide a typical use cases, as used by our customers, to demonstrate the efficiency of Sony modems.
The above figure shows estimated battery lifetime for an example smart meter, considered a critical infrastructure, operating in cellular IoT network.
The above figure shows estimated battery lifetime for an example kid tracker application, limited in resources, operating in cellular IoT network and providing outdoor (GNSS based) and indoor (WiFi based) location.
