The Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA), an international organization, recently announced that Matter 1.0, a technical standard specification for smart home interconnection, was officially released, and the certification program was opened at the same time. The standard specification has been supported by many manufacturers such as Apple, Amazon, and Google at the drafting stage. At present, the organization members cover more than 550 technology companies. Fragmentation has always plagued the development of the smart home industry. With the release of Matter 1.0, alliance member companies from all aspects of the Intelligent Internet of Things (AIoT) ecosystem will have a complete set of solutions to provide the market with new products that can be interconnected across brands and ecosystems, allowing consumers to experience a better experience privacy, security and convenience.
At present, smart devices have gradually covered all aspects of family life. From household appliances to PCs and tablets, from surveillance cameras to various switches and sockets, they can all be connected to the home network to achieve linkage and control. Some institutions estimate that there are dozens of smart devices with interconnection needs in ordinary homes, and the market size is expected to exceed the 200 billion yuan mark in 2022. However, the smart home ecosystems of different manufacturers are incompatible, resulting in a very fragmented experience for users when using smart homes.
In response to this situation, a few years ago, with the support of industry manufacturers, the Connection Standards Alliance planned to formulate a new general standard specification to promote the interconnection between different smart home protocols based on the IP communication protocol, hoping to solve the problem of communication standards in the smart home market. Fragmentation problem. Companies like Amazon, Google, Apple, Silicon Labs, and others are among the first signatories.
According to the professionals, the Matter standard specification is based on the internet protocol that enables smart IoT devices, mobile applications and cloud services to communicate and defines a specific set of IP-based network technologies for device authentication. Taking the classic protocol stack level as an analogy, the bottom layer is the physical and media layers, including the current mainstream wireless standards WiFi, Thread, Zigbee, BLE, etc.; the upper layer is the network layer, including the IP protocol; the upper layer is the transport layer, including TCP and UDP protocol; the top layer is the application layer. Matter is designed at the application layer, which is equivalent to creating a common language, so that products of different manufacturers and different protocols can understand each other's expressions. Smart IoT devices can be added to the Matter network through Bluetooth, interconnected by integrating Thread, Zigbee, BLE and other protocols, and can also be connected to devices with other protocols through a bridge, greatly simplifying the development cost of smart IoT device manufacturers and users. The cost of use and the service cost of installation and landing.
Tobin Richardson, President and CEO of the Connectivity Standards Alliance CSA, said: "This release of the standard is the first step in our organization and the industry's commitment to making the Internet of Things simpler, safer and more valuable. With the strong support of the company, the release of Matter 1.0 is not only an important milestone for our alliance and alliance members, but also opens up a world of possibilities for the future."
Matter was formerly known as the Connected Home over IP Project (CHIP Project). On December 18, 2019, Amazon, Apple, Google, SmartThings and the Zigbee Alliance announced a partnership to form the Project Connected Home over IP working group. The goal of the project is to simplify the development of smart home product brands and manufacturers, while improving product compatibility for consumers. On May 11, 2021, CHIP was renamed Matter, and the ZigBee Alliance was also renamed the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA).
The release of Matter 1.0 will usher in a large number of devices that support the Matter protocol. The release of Matter 1.0 also provides alliance members with test cases and comprehensive testing tools, as well as a certification program that is open to the world. Authorized test labs can provide Matter testing services, which can test Matter's underlying network communication protocols, such as Wi-Fi and Thread.
