Semtech 2021 Review: Optical Communications, Smart Sensors, LoRa, and Win-win

Semtech and Tencent Cloud, a leading Chinese technology company, have announced a definitive agreement to make LoRa Cloud™ geolocation services available to customers through the Tencent Cloud IoT Development Platform. As part of the LoRa Edge™ geolocation platform, LoRa Cloud is now officially integrated into the Tencent Cloud IoT Development Platform, enabling Chinese users to quickly connect LoRa Edge-based IoT devices to the cloud. Combined with Tencent Maps’ highly reliable and high-coverage Wi-Fi positioning capabilities, LoRa Cloud provides Chinese enterprises and developers with a flexible, low-power, and cost-effective geolocation service solution. 

Through this press release, several Semtech executives summarized the company’s business highlights last year and, together with Tencent Cloud IoT product architect Xia Yunfei, introduced the application scenarios and development prospects of the LoRa Edge geolocation platform.

Zhang Hui: China is Semtech's largest market

Zhang Hui, senior vice president of global marketing and Asia Pacific sales at Semtech, said that the Chinese market is Semtech's largest market. Semtech has developed special strategies and products to meet the needs of the Chinese market and continues to increase investment in the Chinese market every year. He said: "We are full of confidence in the Chinese market because China's electronics industry and other markets are the fastest growing in the world."

      Semtech's regional sales share

As shown in the figure, Semtech's sales share in fiscal year 2022, whether in terms of shipments or actual regional consumption, China is undoubtedly Semtech's most important market region.

Zhang Hui said that Semtech entered the Chinese market in 2001 and established an office in Shanghai, and has been rooted in the Chinese market for more than 20 years. Currently, sales, technical support and R&D teams are spread across Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Chengdu, Hangzhou, Xiamen, Xi'an, Suzhou, Wuhan and other cities.

Zhang Hui said: "Semtech relies on its world-leading innovative technology, high-performance and high-reliability products, strong local support, complete and flexible supply chain, and strong delivery capabilities to flexibly meet the diverse needs of customers and help Chinese customers improve their product competitiveness and bring their products to market quickly."

Zhang Hui believes that Semtech has the unique advantages of "global experience + advanced technology" and is committed to solving technical and business pain points for customers and partners through extreme technological innovation, thereby continuously maintaining its leading position in various markets.

Semtech has a broad and balanced product line. At the same time, Semtech's products can be "specialized and refined", with fast iterations, and have been repeatedly recognized by the market for their best performance and high reliability, thus helping customers shorten the time to market for their products. Semtech's solutions provide customers in the Internet of Things, data centers, and mobile industries with rapidly changing products and services, and have been recognized by many industry customers.

Specifically, for example, in the field of infrastructure, Semtech provides chips for data centers, PON/FTTH (fiber to the building and home), 4G/5G/LTE base stations, routers and switches, etc. In the industrial and automotive fields, the Internet of Things, sensor networks, factory automation, ADAS, automotive infotainment systems, navigation, security, video, professional audio-visual technology, and in the fields of high-end consumer electronics such as smartphones, tablets, and wearable devices, its products are among the best.

Semtech focuses on application areas

Semtech's products and solutions for different platform applications

Huang Xudong: Review of Semtech's innovations in 2021 

Zhang Hui said that while the epidemic has brought challenges to the semiconductor and technology industries, it has also brought many opportunities to the semiconductor industry. For example, the trend of working from home has increased the requirements for broadband and brought higher data volumes to data centers. Contactless smart office has promoted the development of sensor technology.

In addition, in the past two years, LoRa technology has been widely used in epidemic prevention and control and smart medical care. LoRa ecosystem partners have developed solutions such as intelligent body temperature monitoring and home isolation epidemic prevention monitoring. Foreign partners have also developed vaccine refrigerators that use LoRaWAN networks to track and monitor vaccine temperatures.

Semtech's sales by business unit

Huang Xudong, vice president of sales for China, took stock of Semtech's innovations in several major product lines in 2021. In addition to LoRa, Semtech has made considerable innovations in the optical communications, sensor and other markets.

Huang Xudong said that in the field of optical communications, the PON market has experienced rapid growth in recent years. From 10G to 25G and 50G PON, technology will continue to develop in the future. At the same time, Semtech will continue to invest in the PON market.

In 2021, Semtech achieved record performance in the PON market, with 10G PON revenue reaching an all-time high. As global service providers accelerate the deployment of higher-bandwidth access networks, PON business, led by 10G PON solutions, is expected to continue to grow. 

Huang Xudong introduced that in the optical communication market, Semtech has launched the first low-power solution for optical communication connections - Tri-Edge™ PAM4 CDR. Tri-Edge is an analog technology that can replace the existing optical communication DSP solution. Compared with DSP, analog technology is simpler in many aspects, but it poses great challenges to architecture, design, and analog design. Semtech has successfully achieved mass production of PAM4 CDR analog products, which have been successfully selected by many customers, and the module products have been delivered to data centers.

Huang Xudong said that Tri-Edge PAM4 CDR achieves low power consumption, low latency and low cost at the same time, which is very suitable for the pain points of current hyperscale data centers.

For the consumer market, Semtech launched the third-generation PerSe™ series of sensors in 2021. PerSe technology is tailored for a variety of consumer smart devices. It can automatically sense the presence of the human body and trigger intelligent responses in a timely manner, bringing the ultimate user experience while complying with SAR regulations. Huang Xudong particularly emphasized the addition of patented intelligent human body sensing technology to PerSe products. As the concept of "metaverse" has received widespread attention, PerSe will also help the development of the consumer market for wearable devices such as VR smart glasses. In addition, in the automotive market, with the advent of the era of electronic intelligence, PerSe can also have a large room for development.

In the field of Internet of Things, Huang Xudong focused on the development of LoRa technology. As of December 2021, more than 2.7 million LoRa-based gateways have been deployed worldwide, and more than 225 million LoRa-based terminal nodes. The deployment of LoRa or LoRaWAN has covered 171 countries and regions. Semtech predicts that by 2026, 50% of LPWAN IoT solutions will use LoRa solutions. The LoRa Alliance is working with major global IoT ecosystems to promote the expansion of LoRa market applications. Currently, the LoRa Alliance has more than 400 company members, including several heavyweight software companies and satellite communication service providers.

List of LoRa Alliance Manufacturers

Huang Xudong said that LoRa technology has the application characteristics of self-organization, security, and controllability, as well as the technical characteristics of long distance, low power consumption, and easy deployment, making LoRa very suitable for the current IoT networking scenarios and needs.

LoRa fills the gap in the long-distance, low-power wireless market

Huang Xudong introduced that Semtech China's application research and development team has developed and released a complete LoRa private protocol networking solution, which is provided free of charge to LoRa ecological partners to accelerate the implementation of LoRa technology. At present, the number of domestic LoRa industry chain companies has exceeded 3,000, and it is widely used in many fields including smart buildings/buildings, industrial parks, asset tracking, power and energy management, meters, fire protection and security, smart agriculture and animal husbandry management, epidemic prevention and control, and medical health.

Omidia predicts growth opportunities for LoRa technology

Looking at the global development of LoRa, Huang Xudong introduced that Semtech released the LoRa Edge ^TM ultra-low power positioning solution and the supporting LR110 chip in 2020, which are used in logistics and asset management, and have now achieved commercial deployment. In addition, in terms of satellite communications, in 2021, the LoRa Alliance released a protocol to support the LR-FHSS function, and Semtech has also released chips that support LR-FHSS. There are currently 163 LoRaWAN operators in the world, which has grown three times in three years. Amazon in the United States released the Sidewalk networking protocol, which also accelerated the application of LoRa in the smart home market. The most eye-catching thing is that in December 2021, LoRaWAN was approved as an ITU (International Telecommunication Union) international standard, and LoRaWAN has become a true LPWAN global standard.

Zhang Hui said that before LoRaWAN was approved as an international standard by ITU, it was already the de facto standard in the global IoT market and was widely recognized by the industry. With the approval of the standard, more end customers will be encouraged to understand LoRa technology and LoRaWAN standards, recognize their application potential, and further promote the development of LoRa standards.