Bittium: Smart IoT Design and Development

Klaus Mäntysaari, SVP for Connectivity

Pioneering in the wireless and the telecommunications industry since its inception, Bittium, formerly Elektrobit, is a design house that develops and validates purpose-built wireless solutions based on customer’s requirements for specific applications. “Bittium has been working in the IoT arena before IoT was defined,” says Klaus Mäntysaari, Senior VP for Connectivity, Bittium. Today, the company has become one among the leaders in understanding and overcoming challenges associated with the advanced design of IoT and wearable devices.

Based in Oulu, Finland, Bittium provides LTE CAT-1 and the latest LTE CAT-M designs addressing the needs in low power consumption and transactional data rates. “We have been seeing a heavy push toward cellular connectivity, namely LTE, residing within the IoT device as complement the local wireless technologies such as WiFi and Bluetooth,” notes Mäntysaari. “Bittium is closely following the LTE IoT evolution path from LTE CAT-M to NB-IoT.”

The firm has been developing industrial, healthcare, wearable IoT devices and reference designs for industry-leading companies. For instance, the company’s healthcare technology products assist health providers in monitoring the biosignals associated with cardiology, neurology, rehabilitation, occupational health and sports medicine.

Device power consumption, security, miniaturization, and ensuring the best possible wireless connectivity are challenging areas in today’s IoT segment.

Bittium’s market competitiveness is based on strong technology and security expertise, as well as an established reputation for reliability and quality

Bittium’s cost-effective solutions minimize the power consumption of devices while optimizing the processing platform’s performance. The firm’s in-house lab develops a suite of services including robust software designing in addition to mechanical and hardware designs. “We have extensive experience in developing real-time operating systems as well as Android and Linux for the IoT segments,” states Mäntysaari.

Bittium made a strategic acquisition of SafeMove in the beginning of 2015 in order to provide high security along with its wireless solutions. Furthermore, the company offers quality products to support the IoT space, including the Bittium Tough Mobile—a secure LTE Smartphone for mobile security and public safety markets and SafeMove mobile VPN products for secure and seamless connectivity.

The firm possesses unique capabilities in designing radio technology and antennas to enhance the network connection to the IoT devices, including LTE-enabled wearables and small form factor IoT devices. To validate the success of wireless designs, the company maintains well equipped RF test chambers on its premises.

To automatically process and analyze the rising data and gain valuable insights, Bittium combines artificial intelligence and machine learning systems. In collaboration with University of Oulu, the company creates an in-house AI team to bring artificial intelligence to its own R&D. Further, the company believes that 5G technology will speed up wireless data transfer in the coming years to over a 200 times than today’s 4G technology, and is investing toward furnishing solutions around it. “Bittium is heavily involved in the 5G development phase and the vision is to be a trusted, secure 5G base station, device and IoT solutions developer in 2020,” concludes Mäntysaari.