Ailabi is recognized by ST to help upgrade the intelligent Internet of Things

Recently, as an important partner of ST, Airlab was awarded the strategic partner certificate at the STM32 Summit, which represents ST's official recognition of Airlab's OTA (Over-The-Air) in the Internet of Things. At the same time, Airlab's strategic partner Quectel Communications also received this honor.  

According to data, Airlab has provided safe and reliable OTA upgrade capabilities for more than 50 million IoT devices, covering more than 500 customers, and has cooperated with nearly ten car manufacturers to perform OTA upgrades on connected vehicles. Airlab and STMicroelectronics have adapted safe and reliable differential upgrade algorithms on the full range of ST MCUs, helping ST MCU developers and customers to achieve lightweight, more resource-saving, traffic-saving, and time-saving OTA remote upgrades. Airlab hopes to develop together with ST and serve more industry customers.

During the summit, Wan Xuejing, vice president of marketing at Airlabi, answered questions about the future prospects and development plans of OTA technology in the IoT field.

OTA's veteran driver Ailabi

ABUP Intelligent Technology was founded at the end of 2017, and it has only been a year and a half, but ABUP has already established a reputation in the OTA field.

Currently, more than 85% of the team members are developers, who come from well-known companies in the fields of automobiles, Internet of Things, cloud services, etc. They have professional device-side development capabilities and rich cloud service experience.

ABUP is committed to building a one-stop OTA upgrade service platform for Internet of Vehicles and Internet of Things: the cloud side is based on AI + Bigdata technology to provide customers with intelligent upgrade experience. The device side is based on years of software technology experience and customized services, allowing customers to obtain more stable and reliable upgrade capabilities with less investment and shorter time.

Wan Xuejing also said that the biggest barrier to OTA is the accumulation of time, especially for fragmented markets such as the Internet of Things, which requires a lot of commercial verification work, specifically different chip platforms and different operating system platforms, all need to be commercially verified. "Whether it is from the perspective of adaptability, power consumption, connection requirements or protocol stacks, for example, we have corresponding OTA products for the full range of ST MCUs, which also means that it is very convenient for customers to use and can accelerate the overall verification process." Wan Xuejing said, "But the premise of everything is that the upgrade is reliable and stable. OTA is a high-risk operation. The larger the shipment volume, the higher the OTA risk. Airlabi must protect customers' OTA."

Innovative differential OTA upgrade method

如图所示，差分式OTA升级看起来就这么简单，但是其中却蕴含着极大的知识产权。“通过差分式升级，我们可能只需要不到5%的资源利用率，就可以完成整体升级需求，从而节省了存储空间及流量资源，还能显著降低功耗并提高效率。”万学靖表示。

Wan Xuejing said that currently, most OTA upgrades are still based on whole package upgrades, which means that more storage space is needed for device manufacturers. In the era of the Internet of Things, through Airlab's continuous and in-depth investment in the device side, the original manufacturers have begun to realize the importance of this technology. At present, chip manufacturers all hope to provide differentiated services to users. As an excellent OTA third party, Airlab has been recognized by some chip manufacturers, and many chip companies have come to them and actively cooperated with Airlab.

As shown on the official website, Airlab supports mainstream embedded manufacturers including TI, NXP, ST, and Ingenic.

"As we serve more and more chip manufacturers, we can better understand their platforms when providing OTA support, and can also evaluate feasibility more quickly," said Wan Xuejing.

"It's hard work to be an OTA operator," said Wan Xuejing. "Our previous business model was to cooperate with downstream companies on specific projects, so you'll see a sharp increase in the number of people we work with after we started IoT. Now, as we have more and more projects and are working more closely with chip manufacturers, we can start trying to build some standardized capabilities to improve service and response efficiency."

OTA with end-cloud integration

Wan Xuejing said that OTA is essentially a solution for end-to-end integration. "Cloud vendors can be said to have the ability to support OTA, but for terminal devices, the device side needs to have perfect upgradeability," Wan Xuejing said.

Wan Xuejing pointed out that IoT OTA is not a PAAS, but a SAAS application, which needs to implement technology for fragmented IoT applications. "The upgrade requirements of IoT are actually diverse, including when it can be upgraded, when it is mandatory to upgrade, when the user needs to allow the upgrade, whether to upgrade the underlying software or the application, etc. There will be many detailed scenarios. If these requirements are not collected, the cloud platform will definitely be imperfect." Wan Xuejing said that these personalized configurations make the OTA platform present a SAAS feature.

With more and more customer scenario-based and personalized applications, the demand for differential upgrade methods is also increasing. You can choose Airlabi's personalized OTA service.

Industrial Internet of Things brings new demands to OTA

Wan Xuejing believes that OTA is naturally suitable for the development of the Industrial Internet of Things. Most industrial products do not have a screen or only have a small screen, and the equipment operating environment is complex. The normal operation of the equipment is crucial to industrial customers. OTA is very suitable for such applications and can solve the problems of after-sales service and secondary payment. For example, in the past, equipment vendors needed to have on-site engineers to solve on-site problems. If they can use the remote upgrade capabilities of the Industrial Internet of Things and OTA, they can save a lot of manpower and material resources for after-sales. At the same time, with the advancement of industrial intelligence, the equipment diagnostic function is becoming more and more powerful, and system failures can be solved in advance through upgrades, functions and performance can be optimized, and equipment safety can be improved.

"If OTA of industrial equipment fails, the impact is extremely serious and the losses are huge, so only by finding the most reliable way can it be put into practice. In the past, the biggest problem with industrial OTA was the lack of a stable and reliable upgrade path. Through the accumulation of IoT terminals and the automotive industry, we can say that we have accumulated a lot of experience, and this is where our confidence lies." Wan Xuejing said.

Airlabi's products already cover automobiles, smart terminals, smart homes and various wireless modules.

Wan Xuejing is delighted to see that as OTA technology is widely accepted, more and more agents and system solution providers need to rely on OTA software to achieve service differentiation, and terminal companies also hope to achieve value-added services such as secondary sales through OTA or other software. For example, at this STM32 Summit, many ST agents have taken the initiative to contact Airlabi, hoping to expand cooperation on a package of OTA solutions.

When talking about the most promising IoT OTA scenarios, Wan Xuejing said that these include various wide area network terminals, industrial manufacturing, and products with more interactive capabilities and AIoT-related products such as smart speakers, HMIs, and cameras. These are the areas where OTA is most likely to play its value. Companies that see the value of OTA mostly attach great importance to the value of software services and the entire life cycle management of equipment.

"As a startup company, we need to focus on niche industries and be able to deeply penetrate the industry's ecosystem to create value together with other partners. We will continue to focus on providing IoT OTA technology and services and strive to be enablers in the niche fields for our partners." Wan Xuejing emphasized.

In September 2018, Airlabi participated in the Yunqi Conference as a member of the Alibaba IoT Alliance and was the only professional OTA service provider at the conference. That same month, Airlabi became the first OTA company in the industry to complete Pre-A round of financing, which also proved the industry's recognition of Airlabi's OTA capabilities.