Wearables SoC for Elderly, Kids' Watches Among Qualcomm Launches at Computex
Qualcomm launched an SoC for wearables Tuesday, one of several announcements at Computex 2016 in Taipei. The Snapdragon Wear 1100 is designed for targeted-purpose wearables requiring small size, extended battery life, smart sensing, secure location and an “always connected” experience,…
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said the company. Features include a power-save mode, Cat 1 modem with LTE/3G global band support and integrated applications processor for Linux-based applications that can scale to support voice, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, said Qualcomm. The company’s iZat location engine provides multi-GNSS, cell-ID positioning and support for geo-fencing for safety monitoring, said Qualcomm. Target applications include watches for the “connected kid” and the elderly, said Qualcomm, which is collaborating with Borqs, Aricent, Infomark and SurfaceInk with Wear 1100. In another Computex announcement, Qualcomm unveiled the QCA4012 dual-band Wi-Fi chip, with low power, small size and security features designed for connected devices in interference-sensitive environments. Qualcomm’s QCA401x solutions feature software support for Apple's HomeKit, Google's Weave and the AllSeen Alliance's AllJoyn software framework to help address fragmentation in the IoT by allowing products to connect across different brands and communication platforms, Qualcomm said. The company also launched a family of tri-radio 802.11ac platforms aimed at boosting home network capacity and optimizing for better consumer Wi-Fi experiences. Features include multi-user multiple-input, multiple-output (MU-MIMO) and Qualcomm Wi-Fi SON (Self-Organizing Networks), bringing premium technologies to mainstream routers and smart repeaters to help accelerate adoption of IoT devices in the home, said Qualcomm. As connected homes add more devices, “Wi-Fi is being stretched to the limit," said Gopi Sirineni, vice president-product management at Qualcomm Atheros. Qualcomm’s new radio solutions combine two 5 GHz radios and a 2.4 GHz radio to improve connectivity in a variety of network configurations where the 2.4 GHz radio can work with legacy devices to free up the 5 GHz radios for newer 802.11ac products, it said. Two new Qualcomm tri-radio platforms use the 802.11ac IPQ40x9 SoC, which integrates the Qualcomm Internet Processor with two-stream 802.11ac and Gigabit Ethernet, the company said. The platforms can boost speeds of premium routers and repeaters to up to 3.1 Gbps, it said.