Renesas announces its first Wi-Fi development kit

Renesas also announced that it will offer Matter support on all future Wi-Fi, Bluetooth Low-Energy (LE)and IEEE 802.15.4 (Thread) products, including products from recently acquired Dialog Semiconductor and Celeno Communications.

The Matter protocol promises to solve the problem of interoperability for smart home devices. It securely and robustly connects various smart devices with each other across ecosystems, regardless of the manufacturer. Matter is an application layer protocol that abstracts the underlying connectivity technologies such as Wi-Fi, Thread and Bluetooth LE. By using a common software stack, device manufacturers who build with Matter will support various smart home ecosystems and voice services. Smart home users will be able to buy any Matter-certified device regardless of their platform of choice.

Renesas is a member of the Connectivity Standards Alliance (the Alliance), the global organisation that creates IoT standards and certification. Chris LaPre, Head of Technology at the Alliance, said: “We’re delighted to see an IoT leader such as Renesas commit to supporting the Matter standard. It’s another indication of the positive momentum the standard is generating across both device and equipment makers.”

“As the embedded processing leader, connectivity is a critical part of our IoT solutions,” said Sean McGrath, Vice President of the Connectivity and Audio Business Division in Renesas’ IoT, Industrial and Infrastructure Business Unit. “With our broad range of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi solutions, and Thread products in development, we’re well positioned to take advantage of the Matter standard in a variety of applications working with customers worldwide.”

Renesas has more than a decade of experience in Bluetooth LE and Wi-Fi. With more than 600 million wireless devices shipped, Renesas offers a broad range of connectivity SoCs used in IoT, wearable products and home networking. Renesas’ easy-to-use development tools supporting Matter will result in faster time-to-market for IoT device makers looking to integrate their product into the Matter ecosystem.