A new family of products from Arch Rock Corporation will let OEMs and system integrators embed Arch Rock's PhyNet wireless sensor network (WSN) technology into their offerings, creating high-volume, low-footprint sensing and control solutions that are based on ubiquitous Internet standards and can be seamlessly folded into the enterprise IT infrastructure. With PhyNet OEM Edition, solution providers can wirelessly connect a broad array of devices that were previously either "offline" or connected via wires, expensive and power hungry cellular technology, or proprietary wireless mechanisms. These devices now can become part of large, resilient and secure router-based wireless mesh networks, communicating via standard IP protocols over IEEE 802.15.4 low-power wireless radio.
PhyNet OEM Edition extends to solution providers the advantages of Arch Rock's PhyNet WSN platform, first introduced as an end-user product in March. A new hardware/software module, ready to embed into third-party sensing and control devices, turns those devices into low-power wireless nodes that form resilient and responsive multihop mesh networks. These networks join the other components of the PhyNet architecture, the PhyNet Server and PhyNet Router, to form a complete WSN solution that can scale to virtually limitless numbers of geographically dispersed meshes, all centrally manageable within an enterprise network. The embeddable PhyNet OEM module runs Arch Rock's comprehensive WSN software suite, which includes an implementation of the IETF 6LoWPAN standard for IPv6 communication over low-power radio, high-performance mesh routing protocols, full TCP/UDP services, ICMP/DHCP management, and embedded web services.
PhyNet OEM Edition is available in two versions:
- The PhyNet NP (Network Processor) Engine is targeted primarily at existing sensor environments where the devices possess computing intelligence but no wireless networking capability. Consisting of a hardware module running the Arch Rock software suite, the PhyNet NP Engine acts like a network interface card (NIC) and provides access to its functionality via a serial connection. The initial version of the module includes a TI MSP430 microcontroller, a TI CC2420 2.4-GHz IEEE 802.15.4 radio, and an Atmel AT45DB 512KB flash memory chip.
- The PhyNet IE (Integrated Execution) Engine is intended primarily for design into new sensor solutions, where integrators want to work in a single, shared hardware/software environment and create custom embedded applications that run directly on the Arch Rock engine. The PhyNet IE Engine consists of the same hardware module and networking software suite as the NP Engine, but also includes memory space for custom application development, as well as an application programming interface (API) rather than a serial connection.
Arch Rock is also offering a PhyNet OEM Edition Development Kit for solution prototyping and testing of both the NP Engine and IE Engine products. The kit includes a PhyNet Server, a PhyNet Router, six development boards and software development tools. Users can set up a six-node working WSN mesh connected by the router to server-based management functions.
Harry Forbes, ARC Advisory Group, commented, "There are 2 notable aspects of this announcement. First, Arch Rock has taken an OEM strategy. This is similar to what Dust Networks has done successfully in the industrial wireless sensing space. Arch Rock will be pursing customers who require end-to-end IP connections to the edge devices in their sensor networks. Process field devices performing wireless sensing are not targets for this capability, but in the power industry advanced metering and demand response are both good candidate applications for end-to-end IP. IP makes more sense than ZigBee in these applications. Second, this new OEM offering supports a standard embedded systems model for the sensor, as opposed to TinyOS, which was used in Arch Rock's own sensor nodes. Moving away from TinyOS is a big change for Arch Rock but a necessary one given their choice to pursue OEMs. TinyOS remains the de-facto standard for academic research in wireless sensing, but the requirements of OEMs are very different from those of researchers."