U‑blox has announced the SARA‑R5 series of LTE‑M and NB‑IoT modules for low power wide area (LPWA) IoT applications. The module is built on the u‑blox UBX‑R5 cellular chipset and the u‑blox M8 GNSS receiver chip. By integrating a hardware‑based Root of Trust in a discrete secure element within the UBX‑R5 chipset, the device provides robust secure communication from the chip all the way to the cloud. The secure element is compliant with EAL5+ High common criteria certification, making the SARA‑R5 well suited to protect sensitive assets and communications.
The module also features a lightweight and low power pre‑shared key (PSK) management system that is tailored to the needs of IoT applications, along with a comprehensive set of security features. LTE‑M and NB‑IoT are forward‑compatible with 5G networks and, by implementing key LTE‑M and NB‑IoT features from 3GPP Release 14, SARA‑R5 offers customers a smooth transition towards 5G via software upgrades to already deployed devices.
The SARA‑R5 series builds on the new u‑blox UBX‑R5 LTE chipset and the u‑blox M8 GNSS chip, which means that production and product lifetime are not dependent on third party chipmakers. For IoT system developers, this translates into long‑term availability, roadmap stability and technical support down to the silicon level.
SARA‑R5 comes in two product variants. Featuring a built‑in u‑blox M8 GNSS receiver, SARA‑R511M targets mobile applications in the automotive, fleet management, tracking, and telematics sectors. The GNSS receiver’s chip‑down design includes a dedicated GNSS antenna interface and can run in parallel with the cellular connection. This assures maximum design flexibility, while preserving overall system power consumption.
The second product variant, SARA‑R510M, is optimized to deliver the lowest achievable power consumption, drawing less than 1 microampere of current in power save mode, making it ideal for metering, smart city, connected health, security and surveillance, remote monitoring and other battery‑powered applications.
Samples for the SARA‑R5 series will be available in Q4 2019.
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