preface

It doesn't matter if you don't know Matter...

One of the most frequently asked and discussed topics in the iot industry since late 2019 has been the Matter protocol, then known as Project Connected Home overIP, a new collaboration between Google, Amazon, Apple and the ZigBee Alliance, Jointly establish a group named "Connected Home Over IP" to create a smart Home protocol standard that can realize intercommunication and interoperation between different protocols based on IP communication protocol, and jointly make efforts to solve the fragmentation of communication standards in the smart Home market. Eliminate the end user on the use of a huge problem.

Until may of this year, the Zigbee Alliance, founded in 2002, changed its name to CSA(ConnectivityStandard Alliance), which was literally a connection standards-related Alliance that sounded more ambitious, like a family bucket. The Connected Home Over IP protocol was renamed Matter.

The CSA alliance even put the MATTER agreement in the most prominent position, which shows the status of matter and how much people love it.

 

With the release of the Matter protocol development plan, the working group has been working day and night, and the landing steps are becoming increasingly tight. There are still many issues worthy of our in-depth analysis:

What changes will the advent of Matter protocol bring to the existing smart home Iot communication protocol?

Foreign magnate breaks the deadlock that delimits the ground for battalion severally in succession, whether does domestic manufacturer also have action?

Are the end product vendors eyeing the initial bonus from the Matter agreement?

What changes will the advent of Matter protocol bring to the existing smart home Iot communication protocol?

There are also various communication protocols used in the existing smart home Iot products, and each technology has its own characteristics and application scenarios.

 

Since Matter is a protocol related to Internet of Things communication, and is mainly targeted at the application layer protocol, will it affect the development of these protocols, especially the implementation of products using these protocol technologies? The answer is yes. From the current Matter working group, the first wave of protocols discussed and supported are WiFi, Thread, Zigbee, and Bluetooth.

Will innate IP-based WiFi get another boost?

WiFi, one of the most popular communication protocols in the physical network application market, is once again benefiting from the birth of MATTER protocol. On the one hand, WiFi is an IP-based technology from the very beginning, and it is natural that it can support matter directly. On the other hand, WiFi has been lacking in application layer protocol unification, especially at the business level of the smart home industry. Although we are familiar with Http,CoAp, MQTT and other application layer protocols that are widely used in Internet of Things applications, they are all standards at the communication level.

At the beginning of IOT WiFi products, the most popular product was the Smart socket. There were Smart plugs everywhere, but problems arose. The Smart Plug produced by each manufacturer has a specific mobile App to be installed, which has little difference in function. However, there are many apps not installed on the mobile phone, and each manufacturer uses different communication protocols and business data formats defined in the protocols, making it even more difficult to talk about interoperability.

Now, with the support of Matter protocol, the application business has been unified, making it possible to interoperate wifi-based Smart home products. What's more, WiFi products can also interoperate with other wireless technology products, making WiFi products more Smart.

Can Thread, with its application-layer wings, take off and start cutting the smart home pie?

You may have first heard of the Thread protocol, which was developed in 2014 by Google's Nest LABS. When I first read the Thread protocol standard, I was really excited by the advancement and practicality of many technical points, such as the decentralized mesh network without single-point-of-fialure, easy access to the Internet based on ipv6, higher security standards, The Open Souce Stack promises better compatibility, more device roles and more, especially compared to ZigBee and Z-Wave. Perhaps these are also the reasons why many foreign giants have joined Thread Alliance. However, the technical advantages do not help Thread to be quickly commercialized. Thread products from some manufacturers can still be seen in foreign countries, let alone in China.

The reason is also the lack of a unified standard at the application layer, although there is support from the application layer such as Google Weave, but there is still no strong push. Now, the support of Matter protocol can be regarded as the wings of the application layer for Thread protocol, and it is recognized by major companies. Thread can take advantage of ip-based access to the Matter network to interoperate with other products.

It seems that Thread protocol can be perfectly applied in smart home system, and may start to leverage the status of zigBee, Z-Wave and other protocols in smart home system. Perhaps the development of foreign countries may be faster, with the ecological support of Google Home, Amzon Echo and Apple HomePod, it will certainly accelerate the access of Thread products. But it may take quite a long time in China. The key is ecology. Take the B-end hardcover room market, which is the most widely used smart home at present, and it has almost taken ZigBee protocol as the industry standard.

Can Zigbee products start to enter the single-product era?

Zigbee manufacturers or developers who know about ZigBee often talk about zigBee as a system technology, which is quite different from WiFi, Bluetooth and other single category products. Once mentioned the system, followed by the system complexity is high, landing difficult, high threshold. But for zigbee, its ultimate goal is to be able to become a single category products accepted by consumers, like wi-fi and bluetooth, from ikea, amazon and taobao to buy back the zigbee product can be done to electricity use, namely and zigbee protocol are born from the physical layer to application layer complete definition, inherently application interoperability. This is why CSA Alliance(formerly Zigbee Alliance) was able to lead the development of Matter with several giants.

The Matter protocol once again raises the possibility of zigBee products being single and interoperable on a larger scale. Zigbee devices connect to a Matter Network through the ZigBee-to-Matter Bridge and interoperate with other devices that support the MATTER protocol. Interoperability between today's mature ZigBee 3.0 devices will ensure standardized access to the Matter network.

Foreign magnate breaks the deadlock that delimits the ground for battalion severally in succession, whether does domestic manufacturer also have action?

Since the creation of the CHIP Working Group, giants like Amazon, Google, and Apple have been determined to make the smart home pie bigger. At the beginning, the big companies brought their own technologies, such as Google's Weave, Amazon's Alexa, Apple's HomeKit and Zigbee's Dotdot, into the formulation and development of the new protocol. Later, the big companies invested a lot of human resources and held key positions in different Tiger Teams of CHIP working group. To drive protocol development. As of May, more than 180 companies and more than 1,700 engineers from these companies were working on the project, mostly from foreign manufacturers, but also from domestic companies. From the formulation of protocol standards for the Internet of Things to the final product landing, often in the upstream of the industry chain chip manufacturers play a key role, let's look at the new actions of domestic chip manufacturers.

LeXin technology

As one of the largest suppliers of IOT WiFi chips, Lexin has a wide range of customers abroad, especially in the open source and geek circles. Lexin Technology's participation in Matter project is also to help Lexin advance from the original WiFi field to other Internet of Things protocols. In early August, Lexin released THE ESP32-H2 chip supporting IEEE 802.15.4 and Bluetooth LE(5.2) standards to fully support Matter protocol. We believe that it will be mainly WiFi. Thread and WiFi+Thread(Board Router) to meet the needs of domestic customers.

Add microelectrons

Fengjia microelectronics has been focused on the development of low power bluetooth chips, its first generation of Bluetooth chip PHY6212 on the market at the beginning, the sound on the market is finally can and European and American Bluetooth chips on the target of domestic Bluetooth chips. The PHY6226, BLE+IEEE 802.15.4 dual-mode chip, PHY62xx series platform is also the first to complete the CSA Alliance Zigbee compatibility platform certification.

It is believed that Fengjiawei also agrees that the Matter protocol promoted by the giants can bring more opportunities. To see the chip architecture of PHY6226, it can be described as "short and pixie", which can be used in the existing Internet of Things terminal products. Yang Zhongqi, head of Fengjia Microelectronics Software R&D Center, also said that the coexistence of multiple protocols in smart home will be normal at present, and the formulation of Matter protocol will bring more opportunities to ZigBee 3.0 standard products. Fengjia Micro has formulated more abundant product roadmap plans for zigBee, Thread, BLE and other different technologies. At the same time, Fengjiawei will use years of experience accumulated in Bluetooth to empower other technical products, such as Zigbee Direct, BLE Provisioning in Matter and other technologies requiring the coexistence of multiple protocols to create multi-mode AIOT chips to meet market demand and help customers accelerate the implementation of products.

Bo flow intelligent

As a rising star of IOT WiFi chip, Bo Liu intelligent has been recognized by top customers in home appliances, lighting and other markets with its excellent performance in the red Sea domestic WiFi chip application market. Then came the BL702 chip, which is also a BLE5.0+IEEE 802.15.4 Combo chip, plus the previous WiFi chip, no doubt is also a great effort to support Matter. From the point of view of the BL702 chip architecture, it can be described as a family bucket chip, compared with other traditional dual-mode chips, can think of the function, did not think of the function also have. It is believed that Boliu intelligent will also focus on WiFi in Matter, and Thread will enter the Matter ecology abroad and access the Matter network through single products.

According to several mainstream IP providers of IEEE802.15.4 and BLE, other semiconductor companies in China are also consulting related IP integration into existing chips, hoping to take a share of the future Matter market.

Are the end product vendors eyeing the initial bonus from the Matter agreement?

Smart home terminal manufacturers in China, which can be described as "fast", all hope to introduce products supporting Matter protocol to the market as soon as possible. For most terminal manufacturers can enter the preparation stage at present, to learning about the Matter, by making code update profile of (https://github.com/project-chip/connectedhomeip), You can build some demos based on currently supported hardware devices. After all, the official Open source SDK of Matter will be released in late 2021, and the 1.0 version of Specification is expected to be released in early 2022, by which time there will be a relatively complete protocol standard, development environment, certification and testing support. In addition, the upstream chip manufacturers must be more anxious, they are working overtime in the development, hoping to provide a perfect "turnkey" Matter scheme to facilitate the product landing. In terms of the ecological environment and technology use of Matter products, the early product ecological environment of Matter must be in foreign countries, dominated by Google,Apple and Amazon. In terms of technology, The products related to Thread must be connected to Matter protocol first, followed by ZigBee. Z-wave and other products that need Bridge assistance access.

conclusion

1. The birth of Matter protocol breaks the existing situation that it is difficult for the same protocol to interoperate and different protocols cannot interoperate. It truly realizes the interoperability of the existing Internet of things in smart home applications, so that terminals can really enjoy the advantages brought by smart home.

2. The CSA Alliance (formerly the ZigBee Alliance), as the leader of the Matter protocol, will extend the full interoperability of ZigBee 3.0 to Matter, which will bring more opportunities for ZigBee 3.0 devices to access different ecosystems.

3. Foreign giants have invested a lot of resources into Matter, and domestic semiconductor manufacturers upstream of the industrial chain will not miss such an opportunity to launch WiFi, ZigBee, Thread and BLE chips to match market demand.

4. Terminal equipment manufacturers start to develop Matter products. Although it is an Open Source project, as a terminal manufacturer, it can only follow the Matter scheme of upstream chip manufacturers.