Smart home devices have become essential tools for improving the convenience of human living, but early smart home devices often only passively accept user-set commands, still lacking in intelligence. With the development of artificial intelligence technology, smart home devices will be able to actively adjust relevant settings to match users' lifestyle and habits. This article will introduce how artificial intelligence will enhance the functionality of smart home devices and how the solutions offered by Silicon Labs will improve the functionality and security of smart home devices.
Artificial intelligence empowers smart home devices with autonomous decision-making capabilities
In many works of science fiction literature, future lifestyles with smart homes have been depicted, and these narratives are gradually becoming a reality. From a functional perspective, the future of smart homes lies in enhancing user comfort, safety, and energy efficiency. To achieve this goal, it's crucial to make it easier to leverage the capabilities of smart devices, transitioning from passive obedient devices that require manual control to active intelligent ecosystems that adapt to our lifestyles.
Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are the key technologies needed to empower edge intelligent devices with autonomy. AI and ML will transform traditional passive devices into active ecosystem participants, providing value to users through environmental awareness and decision-making capabilities.
However, conversely, the use of AI and ML at the edge will increase the demand for security. Enhanced situational awareness prompts the need to bolster security measures to protect AI and ML devices from malicious attacks. This entails devices that collect and store user data need to prevent hackers from exploiting smart devices for their own purposes, thus safeguarding user privacy and security. Additionally, there's a need to enhance security to protect intellectual property (IP) from theft, as device manufacturers have invested significant resources into AI models and do not want their assets to be stolen and used for counterfeit products.
Many of today's smart home devices can be described as passive obedient; they follow instructions and execute functions as they are told. Active intelligence in smart homes, on the other hand, allows devices to understand patterns and preferences within the household through observation and reasoning. With this data, smart homes can make decisions independently, without the need for manual input or programming. Smart home devices can judge and decide based on individuals' lifestyle habits and preferences, making applications more effortless and convenient.
Advanced smart home devices assist in elderly care
One of the areas where smart homes can truly demonstrate their value is in advanced caregiving and monitoring. Leveraging AI and ML, elderly care can be accomplished with less intrusive interventions and provide better cognitive support. Many elderly individuals wish to maintain their autonomy, but their adult children desire regular check-ins to ensure they haven't fallen, been injured, or forgotten to take their medication. In such cases, sensors placed around the house can track the elderly person's activities throughout the day, replacing the need for cameras. By learning their daily behaviors, smart homes can monitor the health and safety of the elderly, alerting human caregivers when abnormal behavior is detected.
To achieve these functionalities, smart capabilities must be maximized. Initially, there was a widespread consensus that AI and ML would occur in the cloud. However, for more complex functionalities, devices need to collect more detailed information about the home and its occupants. Additionally, the number of smart devices placed in homes is increasing, leading to a sharp increase in the volume of data that needs to be processed at the edge.
AI and ML are complex technologies that must be developed by many vendors, each offering assistance in solving artificial intelligence challenges and adding their own value. Therefore, the ability of chip manufacturers to provide a wide range of smart device components becomes crucial. The more comprehensive the options they can provide, the higher the efficiency of the system, and the faster the entry of device manufacturers into the market.
Silicon Labs provides comprehensive smart device solutions
Silicon Labs is one of the leaders in wireless connectivity solutions, offering excellent RF performance and energy efficiency for your smart devices. To protect your intellectual property from counterfeiting and network threats, Silicon Labs provides advanced IoT security measures through Secure Vault™. Additionally, Silicon Labs offers comprehensive protocol stacks, including dynamic multiprotocol capabilities for easy debugging. Moreover, Silicon Labs' Matter solution seamlessly integrates with top-tier smart home ecosystems' software development kits (SDKs), enabling you to quickly launch smart devices and cover a larger user base with a single Stock Keeping Unit (SKU).
Silicon Labs' wireless SoCs and modules are renowned for their outstanding RF performance. The BG21 Bluetooth Low Energy SoC for line-powered devices delivers up to +20 dBm transmit power (without a front-end module, FEM) and high receive sensitivity, ensuring reliable connectivity for your devices in almost any location within the home. For Wi-Fi 6 requirements, Silicon Labs' SiWx915 provides uninterrupted cloud connectivity for high-density environments through its SoC (System-on-Chip), NCP (Network Co-Processor), and RCP (Radio Co-Processor) functionalities. For Wi-Fi 4 applications, Silicon Labs offers the WF200 (4 x 4 mm size) for reliable RCP solutions.
For battery-powered and rechargeable appliances, power efficiency is crucial for providing a better user experience. When designing Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) connections for maximum energy savings, Silicon Labs' BG27 is a compact, ultra-low-power, high-performance wireless solution suitable for BLE applications. It combines best-in-class ultra-low-power radio with a high-performance ARM Cortex®-M33, large memory, DCDC boost, Coulomb counter, and a 16-bit ADC, enhancing device functionality. The BG27 integrates a Coulomb counter, enabling accurate tracking of device battery levels, providing users with uninterrupted usage experience. With its integrated DCDC converter, the BG27 offers a wide voltage range of 0.8V-1.6V or 1.71V-3.8V. Supporting the use of single-cell alkaline batteries and button cell batteries, the BG27 reduces product size, lowers costs, and extends battery life.
For Wi-Fi applications, Silicon Labs' SiWx917 is the market's lowest-power Wi-Fi 6 solution, supporting SoC, NCP, and RCP modes, as well as coexistence with BLE for multiprotocol applications. The SiWx917 SoC is ideal for ultra-low-power IoT wireless devices that require secure cloud connectivity using Wi-Fi®, BLE, Matter, and IP networks. It is well-suited for developing battery-powered devices with long battery life. The SiWx917 SoC includes an ultra-low-power Wi-Fi 6 and BLE 5.4 wireless CPU subsystem, an integrated microcontroller (MCU) application subsystem, security, peripherals, and power management subsystems, all integrated into a single 7x7 mm QFN package, providing a fully integrated solution.
When your smart devices require a higher level of intelligence in terms of availability, functionality, and differentiation, AI and ML capabilities can provide the advantage you need. Silicon Labs' MG24 multi-protocol SoC features a built-in AI/ML hardware accelerator, which can achieve up to four times the ML inference speed with just 1/6 of the energy consumption. This built-in feature allows you to integrate more intelligence into battery-powered devices.
Silicon Labs offers EFR32 SoCs and modules to accelerate the design, development, and deployment of smart devices. The EFR platform supports the major standards and protocols used in smart homes. It also provides the compute, storage, and security resources needed to bring intelligence to the edge. This platform is supported by Simplicity Studio, an integrated development environment that offers tools and features to simplify and optimize IoT development for developers of all skill levels.
Silicon Labs provides a comprehensive portfolio of security platform products for IoT designs. For instance, the EFR32 offers essential security features in configurations tailored to meet the specific requirements of different applications. Silicon Labs also leverages leading-edge security technologies, including TrustZone for Arm Cortex-M architecture MCUs.
Security is an essential feature of smart home devices
Security is one of the most concerning issues for users of smart home devices. Silicon Labs' Secure Vault™ is a leading global IoT security solution designed to protect your devices from the most sophisticated network threats and earn users' trust. Additionally, Silicon Labs offers Custom Part Manufacturing Services (CPMS) to provide you or your contract manufacturer with SoCs featuring customized security features, protecting your intellectual property from counterfeiting during outsourced production.
Security attestations prevent counterfeit devices from using public device IDs to impersonate genuine devices. Secure Vault technology is used to generate unique device public/private key pairs based on ECC directly on the chip, with the private key never leaving the device. Using certificates with the public key, device manufacturers or external services can challenge devices at any time to verify that the chip running the device is authentic.
Secure Vault's secure boot and secure update technologies prevent hackers from hijacking devices by replacing original code with seemingly normal yet malicious code that allows remote control of the device. When secure boot is combined with root-of-trust and secure loader technologies to create a complete "chain of trust," device manufacturers can ensure that devices only run trusted application code, and firmware updates are authenticated before execution.
Secure Vault's secure key management prevents attackers from extracting keys or content from devices, achieved by creating a physically unclonable function (PUF) key based on the unique characteristics of each device. All keys are encrypted using PUF key in secure key management. Additionally, PUF key are generated at startup and are never stored in flash memory.
Secure Vault's secure debugging prevents hackers from controlling devices through the chip's debug port. Device manufacturers can still access device debugging capabilities by using cryptographic tokens to unlock ports. Secure Vault's anti-tamper technology protects devices from tampering attacks, such as voltage glitching, magnetic interference, and forced temperature adjustments. Upon detecting tampering attempts, devices can take suitable action, such as immediately deleting all of its keys.
Conclusion
The rapid advancement of smart home applications is being driven by the key factor of ease of use, and the best way to achieve this goal is to enable devices to think for themselves through AI and ML technologies. However, while enhancing the convenience of smart home devices, attention must also be paid to maintaining user privacy, preventing device hijacking, and protecting the intellectual property of device manufacturers, for which the required security technologies are already in place. By collaborating with Silicon Labs, you can accelerate the development of the smart home devices needed for the future. Take action now to turn imagination into reality.
