Wi-SUN Alliance Announces First Certified Products

Certified products are now available from the Wi-SUN Alliance, an association of companies working together to facilitate wireless smart-utility and energy-management products based on the open IEEE 802.15.4g standard. Certification has been achieved by LAPIS Semiconductor Co. Ltd., Japan’s National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), and Silver Spring Networks. Their first certified products include LAPIS Semiconductor’s ML7396B evaluation system; NICT’s Hyper Wi-SUN 3, and Silver Spring Networks’ Gen4 product portfolio.

Many tests were involved in completing the Wi-SUN Alliance Global Certification Program. Participants were placed through physical-layer (PHY) conformance testing as well as PHY interoperability of smart utility network systems. Those systems are based on products from multiple silicon vendors including LAPIS Semiconductor and Analog Devices. All products are verified for operation in international regulatory bands ranging from Asia to North and South America. Testing and supervision were carried out by TÜV Rheinland Group.

While some alliance members were dedicated to the Wi-SUN PHY test plan, others remain focused on interoperability testing of field-area-network (FAN) profiles and the Wi-SUN Echonet. In fact, the Wi-SUN Alliance debuted its global certification program after the announcement of these certified products. One aspect of this program is interface interoperability testing for wireless modules based on the specification from the Wi-SUN profile for ECHONET Lite. (Those products are verified for operation in Japan.) Interface conformance testing also is conducted for wireless modules based on specifications from the Wi-SUN profile for ECHONET Lite, such as the media-access-controller (MAC), adaptation, network, and transport layers as well as security configuration.