Carrier-grade IoT gateway unveiled at Mobile World Congress Americas

MWCA was held in Los Angeles, California, giving attendees a first-hand look at the unit’s market-leading channel capacity and robust engineering for convenient, reliable and secure IoT connectivity and operation in demanding installations.

Like Kerlink’s entire line of Wirnet iBTS products, the Wirnet iBTS 64 Highway leverages a patent-protected modular architecture to provide unmatched functionality and operational convenience. The company drew on four years of in-field experience with top-tier network providers to make the new gateway easy to integrate and maintain, while also offering superior performance built-in cavity duplexers to ensure outstanding interference rejection, while 72 receive channels (64 x 125kHz and 8 x 500kHz) and eight dedicated transmit channels grant full availability and scalability even in intensive smart-city and smart-industry deployments.

Initial units are slated for customer delivery in October 2018. The Wirnet iBTS 64 Highway will also be shortly available as part of a turnkey end-to-end IoT network-as-a-service connectivity package, as announced earlier this year.

“There’s no substitute for the hands-on education we’ve received by delivering and supporting over 100,000 gateways with more than 330 clients in every part of the world,” said Carlos Briceno, Kerlink’s Vice President-America. “We’ve come to understand all the requirements for a truly carrier-grade solution, during up-front implementation and integration and day-to-day operation, and they are all reflected in the Wirnet iBTS 64 Highway.”

These include key security features like a secure-core and secure-bootstrap software-enhancing security link, and secured backhaul and signed firmware management with OpenVPN and IPSec support. The system allows for secure reboot (watchdog) and recovery on previous configuration (or factory configuration if a boot issue is not fixed).

The iBTS 64 Highway can serve as a full-duplex, carrier-grade LoRaWAN gateway, delivering improved geolocation with reliable finer timestamping across 64 channels to make the most of Kerlink Wanesy Geolocation solution. In addition, the station’s software-designed radio (SDR) has been designed to accommodate future, evolutive changes in LoRaWAN technology, like full compatibility with LoRa-e.

Also incorporated are robust lightning protection and back-up batteries, and better energy efficiency than currently available solutions, which result in both lower electricity bills and reduced heat dissipation for enhanced reliability and constant optimal performances

Integration of the Wirnet iBTS 64 Highway into broader networks and multi-partner vertical applications is facilitated by Kerlink’s Wanesy Management Centre toolset for network design, provisioning, maintenance, and operation. This enables fast rollouts and reduced time to market, along with remote configuration, management, software upgrades, and monitoring/troubleshooting capabilities for constant optimised performances and managed scalability.