NextG-Com, an expert in embedded software products and services for LTE, M2M and satellite communications, has announced the availability of the first LTE protocol stack specifically designed and developed to meet the needs of the machine-to-machine communications (M2M) industry.
ALPS-Lite is the first Category 0-ready LTE protocol stack, designed to provide a cellular connectivity solution for M2M markets. The architecture of this highly customisable, ultra lightweight protocol stack solution is designed for low cost, low bandwidth, low power M2M platforms with reduced mobility requirements and infrequent small burst data.
"Right now the M2M industry is looking for specific technology solutions to alleviate the high cost and high footprint requirements of the standard LTE device, while satisfying operators' preference for LTE high spectral efficiency and future-proof deployment," Said Denis Bidinost, NextG-Com CEO. "In response to this requirement, we have applied our extensive experience in M2M-specific applications to develop ALPS-Lite."
ALPS-Lite is designed with modular architecture, providing exceptional flexibility in the features it supports, depending upon the specific M2M platform requirements. To address the need for minimal memory and minimal cost, ALPS-Lite is available with NextG-Com's highly optimized ASN.1 data stack and ultra lightweight SE-RTOS (real-time operating system), which is specially designed for M2M applications. This approach reduces third party dependency and licensing cost, and enables faster product development.
ALPS-Lite is fully validated against the 3GPP conformance test suite, thus providing a robust and well tested solution enabling faster system integration, leading to shorter product development and reducing time to market.
ALPS-Lite is powered with a well defined and highly customizable abstraction layer towards underlying platform, RTOS and physical layer (PHY), making it easy to port to different M2M platforms. It does not require a specific MCU or DSP for its execution, but can be ported to the same core as the application or LTE PHY to minimize cost.
Flexible and scalable, ALPS-Lite is designed to be easily extended to support high throughput and full mobility if required in specific M2M applications, with a clear and future-proof roadmap towards Release 12 3GPP MTC.