NXP Expands Partnership with US DOT; Showcases Today’s Solutions to Build Tomorrow’s Smart Cities

At NXP Semiconductor’s (NASDAQ:NXPI) annual user conference, NXP FTF 2016, the company is showcasing new solutions to help engineers and developers create secure, smart, connected experiences. A key theme for the event is the future smart city, which presents a complex, multi-vertical opportunity for the Internet of Things (IOT) that crosses public and private sectors. According to United Nations, nearly 70 percent of the world’s population will live in urban environments by 2050. NXP’s solutions are designed to meet the challenging demands from the IOT landscape and transform the way people live, work, and play. For cities, this means smarter transportation and traffic systems, improving citizen access to services and healthier lifestyles, and uniting connectivity and security in a growing society of digitized human interactivity and exchange of personal and private data in a secure manner.

Partnering with the US DOT to Cultivate Smart Governance Developments
The U.S. Department of Transportation today announced an expanded partnership on the Smart City Challenge to now include NXP RFID tagging solutions and smart card ICs. The addition of NXP RFID tagging to the Smart City Challenge will enable automatic vehicle identification and more streamlined traffic and toll payments. The smart card ICs are designed to make eGovernment services easier and more secure.

To date, the NXP contribution to the Smart City Challenge includes vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2X) technology; long-range, secure and private RFID tagging for automatic vehicle identification and road safety systems; and smart card ICs to enable secure admission to transportation, access control, retail and other municipal services.

Advancing Smart Transportation

NXP today also demonstrated a comprehensive and highly manufacturable autonomous vehicles platform leveraging NXP’s new BlueBox engine, and deploying NXP silicon and software solutions at each ADAS node. The system demonstration incorporates the BlueBox central computing engine, together with radar, lidar, and vision sensing, as well as an onboard secure V2X system – all of which are powered by NXP silicon currently in volume production or sampling to customers now. NXP’s V2X technology is especially valuable to smart cities, because it enables drivers to “see” around corners, and through traffic obstacles such as big trucks ahead, thereby calming traffic and helping to reduce accidents.

Enabling Citizen Engagement with Smart Mobility Solutions
The Company showcased various benefits for combining MIFARE and NFC technology. From plastic cards and key fobs to smartphones, watches, and other wearables. MIFARE is common criteria certified and can offer support for the latest methods of encryption and secure authentication in security critical use cases such as public transport, educations systems, banking and smart retail. The demonstration weaves together applications and consumer touchpoints with MIFARE and NFC in an interconnected smart city.

Driving Development of Natural, Human Interfaces for Smart Machines and Buildings

Opening the door for secure human machine interactions for industrial, medical, automotive or other media intensive applications, NXP released the i.MX 8 multisensory enablement kit (MEK). The powerful i.MX 8 architectures are designed to enable engineers to explore and advance multimedia and display interfaces for everyday interactions.

Accelerating Development of Solutions for Smart Home and Smart Life  
NXP released new additions to the Single Chip System Modules (SCM) portfolio—the SCM-i.MX 6SoloX and the V-link bus technology that gives customers additional options for vertical integration, ideal for space constrained and IoT applications.  These highly integrated devices reduce customer design cycles, dramatically reduce PCB area, and deliver enhanced capability in a single solution. And the company also introduced a home gateway platform delivering up to 20 Gbps of broadband performance, plus additional on-premise performance headroom to support a wide range of applications that enhance the energy efficiency and comfort of smart homes and smart buildings.

NXP also released various wireless modules to accelerate development of smart home systems including home gateway, smart “end nodes” devices and home appliances. The wireless modules are pre-certified FCC/CE/IC and can be loaded with the latest NXP Zigbee 3.0 stack that enables customers to easily and quickly introduce new wireless products into the market.

Additionally, NXP announced high performance components and integrated modules for solid state RF cooking appliances that enable the future smart kitchen experience.

Spearheading Smart Electronic Payment Developments

Expanding the Company’s support for the smart electronic payments market, NXP introduced a point-of-sale (POS) reader solution platform, SLN-POS-RDR, to enable customers to quickly develop and launch secure, contact and contactless payment systems into the market. The evolving market of electronic payments introduces new, innovative form factors, use cases and integration levels for the latest payment devices.  NXP’s proven and certified POS reader solution platform enables developers to jump start their development and focus on innovation beyond the classical barriers to entry.