Nurlink Completes First Call on Commercial NB-IoT Network with its CEVA-powered eNB-IoT SoC

Successful over-the-air call completed on China Telecom NB-IoT network with NK6010 Cat-NB2 SoC based on CEVA-Dragonfly NB2 IP

News provided by

CEVA, Inc.

Jun 19, 2019, 07:00 ET

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. and SAN DIEGO, June 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- CEVA, Inc. (NASDAQ: CEVA), the leading licensor of signal processing platforms and artificial intelligence processors for smarter, connected devices, and Nurlink Technology, Inc., a fabless IC design company specializing in cellular IoT wireless communications, today announced the successful completion of the first over-the-air (OTA) call on China Telecom's NB-IoT network using the Nurlink NK6010 NB-IoT System-on-Chip (SoC). The test was carried out in Nanjing, China, with the Nurlink SoC connecting to China Telecom's Cloud IoT Platform over the NB-IoT network. It represents an important milestone towards the mass market production of Nurlink's CEVA-Dragonfly NB2 based SoC.

"We are immensely proud to complete our first over-the-air call on one of the world's most-advanced NB-IoT networks in less than 15 months after beginning our SoC design," said Dr. Xiaohua Kong, Nurlink CEO. "The CEVA-Dragonfly NB2 platform, along with CEVA's excellent technical support, provided the solid foundation that enabled us to achieve this milestone so quickly."

"CEVA is committed to ensuring that NB-IoT is the long-range connectivity 'standard-of-choice' for IoT devices by offering a comprehensive NB-IoT IP solution that significantly lowers the entry barriers for companies looking to integrate this technology into their SoC designs," said Ange Aznar, Vice President and General Manager of the Wireless IoT Business Unit at CEVA. "Nurlink's latest milestone is highly impressive and represents a strong endorsement of both the excellence of their engineering team and of the capabilities of our CEVA-Dragonfly NB2 IP to rapidly advance NB-IoT SoC design."

NK6010 is an ultra-low cost and power-efficient NB-IoT SoC designed specifically for narrowband connectivity in mass market IoT devices such as smart meters, wearables, asset trackers and industrial sensors. Built based on the CEVA-Dragonfly NB2 solution, the SoC incorporates RF front-end, RF transceiver, cellular baseband, power management unit and application processor, to minimize the chip size and cost of the solution. It supports full NB-IoT frequency bands with major global carriers, ensuring smooth and rapid certification of devices on any NB-IoT commercial network around the world. The SoC also includes an extremely low-power multi-GNSS subsystem, which supports GPS/Beidou/Galileo/GLONASS global navigation systems. This subsystem allows fast positioning while also supporting highly-accurate device tracking. NK6010 is currently undergoing testing with operators worldwide and expected to enter mass production later this year.

The CEVA-Dragonfly NB2 IP solution is a modular technology, composed of the CEVA-X1 IoT processor, an optimized RF Transceiver, baseband, and a protocol stack to offer a complete Release 14 Cat-NB2 modem IP solution that significantly reduces time-to-market and lowers entry barriers. It is a fully software-configurable solution and can be extended with multi-constellation GNSS and sensor fusion functionality. The IP includes a reference silicon of the complete modem design, including an embedded CMOS RF transceiver and PA, an advanced digital front-end, physical layer firmware, and a protocol stack (MAC, RLC, PDCP, RRC, and NAS). For more information, visit https://www.ceva-dsp.com/product/dragonfly.

Join CEVA at #MWC19 Shanghai, June 26-28, and experience the full suite of CEVA connectivity and smart sensing IPs. For more information, visit https://www.ceva-dsp.com/event/mwc-shanghai-2019/.

About Nurlink

Nurlink Technology, founded in 2017, is a fabless IC design company with subsidiaries and offices in California, Nanjing, Shenzhen, Beijing, and Hong Kong. Leveraging its world-class talents in RF analog, modem, GNSS, and SoC systems and software, Nurlink Technology commits to delivering the best RF/SoC chips for powering the next-generation cellular IoT wireless communications, i.e. mMTC, while enhancing significant cost and performance advantages for customers. The current product portfolio from Nurlink Technology includes NB-IoT and cat-M SoCs, serving numerous markets including smart meter, smart city, wearables, asset tracking, and more. For more information visit http://www.nurlink.com.

About CEVA, Inc.

CEVA is the leading licensor of signal processing platforms and artificial intelligence processors for a smarter, connected world. We partner with semiconductor companies and OEMs worldwide to create power-efficient, intelligent and connected devices for a range of end markets, including mobile, consumer, automotive, industrial and IoT. Our ultra-low-power IPs for vision, audio, communications and connectivity include comprehensive DSP-based platforms for LTE/LTE-A/5G baseband processing in handsets, infrastructure and cellular IoT (NB-IoT and Cat-M) enabled devices, advanced imaging and computer vision for any camera-enabled device, audio/voice/speech and ultra-low power always-on/sensing applications for multiple IoT markets. For artificial intelligence, we offer a family of AI processors capable of handling the complete gamut of neural network workloads, on-device. For connectivity, we offer the industry's most widely adopted IPs for Bluetooth (low energy and dual mode) and Wi-Fi (Wi-Fi 4 (802.11n), Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) and Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) up to 4x4). Visit us at www.ceva-dsp.com and follow us on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram.

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SOURCE CEVA, Inc.