French IoT firm Kerlink has announced a LoRaWan indoor gateway to help smart cities, factories, warehouses and building owners and operators support the booming number of connected sensors and devices of massive IoT.

The Wirnet iZeptoCell gateway is designed to support low-power, wide-area-network (LPWAN) and LoRaWan technology, which is suited to handle the three key characteristics of massive IoT: the huge number of individual endpoints (sensors or devices) connected to IoT networks; the increasing challenges for network coverage of remote and widely dispersed endpoints or deep inside building installations in basements and underground; and the soaring amounts of small data packages sent to the edge and to the cloud from the endpoints, requiring only low latency and small bandwidth.

“This new member of Kerlink’s Wirnet iSeries is not only the newest Kerlink product, it embodies a brand-new fully operational design combining hardware, software and value-added services that are critical for massive IoT and improved end-user experience,” said Jean-Philippe Balberde, Kerlink’s products marketing manager.

Although global forecasts of installed IoT end devices are regularly updated as their actual deployment increases, massive IoT generally refers to billions of such devices. Gartner expects more than 15 billion IoT devices will connect to the enterprise infrastructure by 2029.

The gateway allows network operators and owners to overcome the three main challenges common to deployment of customised and private indoor LoRaWans designed for massive IoT:

• Simple and quick installation in varied environments because of its compatibility with different sources of power, such as multi-blade AC-DC power supply, USB and power-over-ethernet (PoE) splitters;
• Flexible optimised backhaul versions with Ethernet or native LTE-M links, priced to accommodate different network configurations, as well as budgets; and
• Strictly plug-and-play thanks to features such as zero-touch provisioning, eliminating the need for users’ technical expertise.

The gateway is available in two versions that differ only in their backhaul option. The Ethernet version is available now with the LTE-M model expected in February next year.

“Wirnet iZeptoCell is the perfect alliance between an innovative new hardware using the latest technologies, such as Sx1302, internal antennas and native cellular backhaul, and Kerlink’s well-known, powerful software synonym for operational excellence, currently installed on more than 70,000 gateways around the world,” Balberde said. “The result is a timely, market-responsive gateway that addresses the demands of massive IoT, and which embodies Kerlink’s industrial-grade technical expertise with both superb radio performance and impressive product reliability.”

The gateway is natively associated with the Wanesy Management Plane (WMP), a set of tools dedicated to remote network-performance monitoring and diagnostics to deliver stability, availability and reliability. WMP is a subset of the Wanesy Management Center (WMC) carrier-grade capabilities that allow users to perform targeted network exploitation and optimisation through gateway configuration, monitoring, alerting and troubleshooting.

API-first designed and user-friendly interfaces simplify network remote deployment and ongoing operations, to increase quality of service over time. For example, WMP can help network operators automatically update with the latest firmware and software, orchestrate downloads and configurations, or identify needs for network densification.

This native combination of hardware equipment and software management tools also can help operators achieve a reduction of operational costs up to 25 per cent.

More than 140,000 Kerlink installations have been rolled out with over 350 clients in 70 countries. Based in France, with subsidiaries in the USA, Singapore, India and Japan, Kerlink is a co-founder and board member of the LoRa Alliance and the uCIFI Alliance.