Does Matter for Smart Homes Matter for RF Hardware?

This year, an increasing number of smart home devices are being shipped and marketed as Matter certified. Many of these smart home devices are wireless Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices, which begs the questions: is Matter a relevant wireless standard, and does it/will it impact the wireless hardware in smart home IoT devices along with subsequent hardware and testing systems needed to develop smart home IoT hardware?

What is Matter Anyway?

Matter is a new standard that is optimally being designed to aid in unification of the very fragmented smart home device market. Prior to Matter, most smart home devices required very specific apps and even hardware to function on a home network and these systems are proprietary and it has been a challenge to users to make these systems work together. This consumer frustration and the impact it has had on smart home technology adoption spurred many organizations operating in the smart home market to concede to a unifying application-layer connectivity standard, that is ground-up designed to be reliable, secure, and to enhance interoperability for connected devices for smart home applications. The Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA) is the body that is developing and promoting the standard and has designated it as open-source and royalty-free to further aid in the adoption of the standard.

Matter is based on the IP standard, so that Matter can facilitate communication from smart home devices, mobile applications, and cloud services on a specifically defined set of IP-based networking technologies for device certification. Matter is being designed to be a universal IPv6-based communication protocol with a defined application layer meant to be deployed on devices, and Matter also provides several link layers to aid in interoperability. These link layers include Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Thread, and 802.15.4/Zigbee/Zwave, which are the most common communication standards for smart home devices.

Does Matter Matter For RF?

As Matter consists of an application layer and link layers, Matter shouldn’t in any way impact the RF hardware design or development for smart home/relevant IoT devices. However, if Matter is successful in the goal paved out for it, Matter should rapidly boost smart home technology adoption among consumers worldwide. If Matter is successful in providing an ecosystem of non-fragmented smart home devices and consumer opinion is positive compared to the current state of smart home technology, then there may be a boom in the number of smart home devices deployed, most of which will likely be wireless. This could impact the wireless device testing market and increase the number of companies and brands that are able to compete in this space, increasing demand for wireless testing and development hardware.

Resources

1. https://csa-iot.org/
2. https://csa-iot.org/all-solutions/matter/
3. https://github.com/project-chip/connectedhomeip#readme