---

Semtech has joined the Z-Wave Alliance as a new member and will take a seat on the organisation’s board of directors, adding another silicon supplier to the standards body behind Z-Wave technology for smart home and IoT systems.

Semtech joins the Z-Wave Alliance board

The Z-Wave Alliance said Semtech will contribute silicon and low-power wireless experience as the group works on standards development, certification and ecosystem expansion for residential, commercial, multi-dwelling and hospitality deployments. The organisation describes itself as a member-driven standards development organisation for Z-Wave, which is recognised as ITU G.9959.

The move also broadens the supplier base for the Z-Wave ecosystem. The Alliance said Semtech is the third silicon provider to join the Z-Wave ecosystem. Current board companies include ADT, Alarm.com, Assa Abloy, BlueConnect Partners, Fortune Brands, Johnson Controls, Nabu Casa, Silicon Labs, Trident IoT and Vivint.

Z-Wave Alliance role follows LoRa Plus deal

Semtech’s board role follows its February agreement with Trident IoT around Z-Wave connectivity for the LoRa Plus platform. Under that deal, customers buying LoRa Plus transceivers are to receive royalty-free access to Trident IoT’s Z-Wave SDK and development tools, with Zigbee and Thread/Matter support on the roadmap. Semtech said in February the work is centred on LR2021, its multi-PHY LoRa Plus transceiver.

That makes the Alliance seat less of a symbolic smart-home move and more of a standards-channel extension for Semtech’s multi-protocol IoT strategy. The company has been positioning LoRa Plus for systems that need more than one low-power protocol on a common hardware base. As previously reported by eeNews Europe when Semtech introduced its first LoRa Plus transceiver, the platform targets applications such as smart metering, utilities, security and smart home systems that may need LoRaWAN, W-MBus, Wi-SUN FSK or Z-Wave connectivity.

Low-power IoT and Edge AI sensors

Olivier Beaujard, senior director of the LoRa ecosystem at Semtech and chair of the LoRa Alliance board, said the company’s work with Z-Wave is aimed at multi-protocol chipset solutions for smart, connected devices. He pointed to Edge AI sensors for smart security, industrial and commercial IoT as examples, with requirements for long-range, low-power connectivity and enough data throughput for functions such as audio, video and over-the-air updates.

Avi Rosenthal, chair of the Z-Wave Alliance board, said Semtech’s experience in large-scale wireless deployments would support Z-Wave as it expands beyond the smart home. The Alliance claims more than 300 million installed Z-Wave devices and over 4,500 certified devices. Its Z-Wave Long Range specification is aimed at deployments beyond the home, with a claimed range of up to about 2.4 km for multi-dwelling, hospitality, commercial and industrial use cases.

---

---