Friday, September 26, 2008

Ember, Skyworks connect on ZigBee networking

By Efrain Viscarolasaga

The meter reader, manually checking the power consumption in local neighborhoods, is going the way of the door-to-door salesman, the milkman and analog television. A pair of local companies are hoping they can cash in on the opportunity.

Boston-based wireless chip maker Ember Corp. and Woburn-based radio frequency (RF) component maker Skyworks Solutions Inc. have partnered to create what executives say is the first portfolio of front-end modules designed specifically for ZigBee, a low-power wireless protocol aimed at remote monitoring and sensor network applications.

According to executives at both companies, ZigBee has many applications, but with the growing concerns over efficient power grids, both companies are pointing to automated meter reading as the application that will lay the foundation for wider ZigBee adoption.

For Skyworks, the partnership represents the company’s maiden voyage in the ZigBee community. Already well established in the handset market, where the firm boasts customers such as Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB, Motorola Inc., Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics and Research in Motion Ltd., Skyworks executives are looking to broaden the company’s reach.

“It is definitely becoming a wireless world, beyond just handsets, and we are looking to diversify our applications into different areas,” said Wes Boyd, senior product marketing manager at Skyworks. “We see a really nice growth rate in both meter reading and home area networking applications.”

For Ember, the deal provides the company with a partner to add front-end circuitry — power amplifiers, signal switches, low-noise amplifiers — to its ZigBee chips, making the inclusion of the protocol easier for equipment manufacturers.

Since its founding in 2001, Ember has raised more than $81 million in private funding and has always been focused on ZigBee, which has seen its share of false starts. The company has penetrated some areas, including energy management applications in environments such as hotels, but the combination of an established protocol (the ZigBee PRO specification was officially completed by the IEEE last fall) and a growing interest in automated meter reading and environmental management has executives optimistic about the protocol’s future.

“We (as an industry) were sitting around and waiting for ‘the year of ZigBee’ and I think it happened last year,” said Bob Gohn, vice president of marketing. “I still wouldn’t say it has penetrated all of the residential applications, but it’s getting there.”

According to a report by Juniper Research Ltd. last year, automated meter reading is expected to lead the emerging machine-to-machine (M2M) market over the next few years, generating $9 billion in revenue in 2009, compared to $2 billion in 2006. What’s more, California-based West Technology Research Solutions LLC is predicting that the ZigBee market overall will grow at a rate of 17 percent per year over the next five years, from approximately 8.4 million units shipped in 2007 to 516 million units in 2012.

But automated meter reading isn’t mainstream quite yet. Insiders point to two projects as indicators of the future: in Texas, where a Dallas utility has agreed to buy $360 million worth of smart meters for three million homes and small businesses, and in California, where Southern California Edison plans to replace 5.3 million standard meters with automated systems between 2009 and 2012. Through its technology partner, Washington-based Itron, Inc., Ember's chips are slated to be in both projects.