May 2017
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LoRa. This setup makes LoRa one of the
most interesting low-power wide-area net-
work technologies for many applications. Tar-
get application areas include IoT and M2M
installations in smart cities and industrial
applications such as agriculture, infrastruc-
ture, utilities, and logistics.
EXPEMB has developed a modular and scal-
able multi-service gateway for such LoRa net-
works that is designed for both commercial
as well as harsh industrial environments and
can be deployed in various applications, from
control cabinets in facilities, to substations in
energy grids, to cellular base station like infra-
structures for smart city and smart agriculture
projects. The FlexGate gateway that is Thing-
Park approved by Actility includes a real LoRa
concentrator structured around a dedicated
Semtech SX1301 chip. It has the capability
to simultaneously listen to 8 LoRa channels
in order to communicate with several thou-
sands of connected nodes. FlexGate gateways
also offer rich connectivity towards the cen-
tral cloud with 1Gbit Ethernet link, Wi?Fi,
3G/4G and Bluetooth. All links are simulta-
neously available on the gateway and fall back
can be set according to different scripts. This
approach ensures reliable communication
regardless of the local topology.
A broad range of field I/Os such as 2x USB
ports, 1x serial port and GPIOs makes it possi-
ble to interface other local devices with wired
communication in different flavors including
Modbus fieldbus support. Integrating only
industrial components without any moving
parts such as fans or HDDs, the FlexGate gate-
way is a high reliability platform designed for
24/7 operation. It is powered by DC or PoE+,
where the later reduces cabling efforts. Out-
door configurations support the extended
temperature range and IP67 protection with
associated waterproof connectors.
The FlexGate gateways are designed as appli-
cation-ready platforms and offer manage-
ment services based on a modular Linux
framework that is dedicated to the IoT. This
open architecture allows easy integration of
any new services required. Services that are
already part of the standard configuration
include highly secured communication layers
as well as an open packet forwarder that for-
wards RF packets received by the concentrator
to a server through an IP/UDP link, and emits
RF packets that are sent by the server. Beyond
the extensive LoRa network support in the
field, the FlexGate gateway also offers flexible
cloud-to-field connectivity which is ready to
adapt local LoRa configurations and to facili-
tate every required service needed, from field
deployment services to operational monitor-
ing and management as well as maintenance
services including remote firmware upgrade
(FOTA) functions. As the product line has
been designed to address all various needs of
LoRa gateway deployments, the system family
can integrate all common processor technol-
ogies independently from the microarchi-
tecture. This enables EXPEMB to offer its
gateway technology in absolutely all customer
projects that might occur one day. Because the
company didn’t want to limit its LoRa core
competence to a certain processor technology
as this would limit our market potential too
much. It therefore designed a twin architec-
ture platform capable of hosting both ARM
and x86 technologies, which allows to partici-
pate in all calls for tenders.
Current FlexGate gateways are equipped with
flexible processing power based on two major
processor families: One is the latest genera-
tion of Freescale i.MX6 low power multi-CPU
cores. The other one is the Intel Atom E3800
product family with 1 to 4 cores (code name
Bay Trail). Both flexible architectures of the
FlexGate portfolio offer a processing power
that can easily be adapted to different use
cases due to its wide performance scalability
up to fog and edge server intelligence. The
implemented hardware platform as well as
the performance flexibility have been made
possible by integrating Qseven Comput-
er-on-Modules that support both architec-
tures, ARM and x86.
The usage of such modules also enables
EXPEMB to switch one of these processor
families to the next latest state-of-the-art
technology without any need to change the
hardware design. This makes the FlexGate
gateways a platform that can be deployed lon-
ger than the lifecycle of the processors, which
is 15 years for Freescale and 7 plus years for
Intel. Additionally, future processors like
the next Intel Atom generation codenamed
Apollo Lake can also be implemented.
From the vendor point of view, EXPEMB
has chosen modules from congatec because
they are leading in Computer-on-Modules
in Europe and offer best in class service and
support as well as one of the broadest Qseven
portfolios available. And even though this
company has highest market share – which
could imply complicated processes to get the
right support due to a huge fragmented orga-
nization – the personal integration support is
what EXPEMB is most happy with.
The challenge was to get a more or less iden-
tical functional setup for the different archi-
tectures to enable to scale the solutions in the
most efficient way. For this purpose, congatec
provides perfect platform support to build
uniform families with both x86 and ARM.
Most standard Computer-on-Module ven-
dors have dedicated experts for each architec-
ture. Congatec had the same expert for both
architectures. That made communication
very efficient.
n
The FLEXGATE Gateway
The QSeven modules used in the FLEXGATE gateways
