Liem Ly, Business Development Manager at Qualcomm, was on hand to walk through the micro-power Wi-Fi connectivity demo at Embedded World 2024, which showcases how Qualcomm's new QCC730 SoC can be used to enable battery less Wi-Fi sensor to cloud applications. pic.twitter.com/sC0nm3oUnT
— Qualcomm EU (@Qualcomm_EU) April 11, 2024
Qualcomm’s new wi-fi innovations
Today, Wi-Fi is more important than ever. It allows remote workers to do their jobs and is vital for a lot of online businesses today. Many companies operate by selling products or services online, so their client base needs to have a functioning internet connection.
For example, streaming a Netflix show to a tablet requires Wi-Fi, as would accessing an iGaming site. The internet is also the world’s most powerful marketing tool, so even offline businesses rely on everybody having Wi-Fi. With our examples, Netflix popularised the free trial for streaming while iGaming sites offer daily free spins with bonus rounds for games that are hosted online and only accessible with an internet connection. Wi-Fi is also crucial for machine-to-machine communication, which is what ties the smart home together.
That’s where Qualcomm enters the situation. They may not be a big name like Android or Apple, but Qualcomm hardware can be found in a lot of today’s smartphones. They specialise in semiconductors, with their Snapdragon chipset being very popular in phones and even laptops. Given their focus on handheld devices, they work with Wi-Fi a lot. Now they have revealed their plans to level up your home with new smart home technology.
At the Embedded World conference, they unveiled several exciting products aimed at homeowners and internet service providers. This included more details about Service Defined Wi-Fi, which the company had announced in 2023. This is a service for internet providers where broadband usage is labelled and prioritised based on its function. For example, subscribers can get better optimisation for their favourite apps or streaming services as part of a dedicated package, instead of a catch-all broadband package where quality may vary across services.
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Qualcomm’s affordable smart home tech
One Qualcomm announcement received more fanfare than the rest, however. That was the QCC730 system-on-a-chip, or SoC. It’s an all-in-one microchip that acts as a Wi-Fi transceiver, so it can receive and transmit Wi-Fi signals. It’s small and very power efficient, using 88% less power than their previous attempts at a similar chip. It can even function without a battery, if there’s enough ambient light to fulfill its tiny power demand.
All of these features make it ideal for use in the smart home, which is exactly what Qualcomm had in mind when designing it. If smart home products rely on hyper-efficient batteries or ambient lighting from the home, then they won’t draw from the home’s power supply. This can make the cost of installing and maintaining a smart home much, much cheaper if it becomes industry standard.
These new chips are also AI-ready, so they’re futureproofed for possible automation in the IoT space. We’ve already seen basic automation in smart homes, like smart thermostats that can regulate themselves, but we can expect more advanced automation in the future. When AI smart home managers become mainstream, this new chipset is ready to power them without breaking the bank.