IoT Hardware Development
End-to-end IoT hardware design — Edge devices, sensor nodes, and industrial gateways. From wireless connectivity to cloud integration, we build the physical layer of your IoT ecosystem.
IoT Hardware Development Strengths
Multi-Protocol Wireless
WiFi 6, BLE 5.3, LoRa/LoRaWAN, NB-IoT, LTE Cat-M1, Zigbee 3.0, Thread/Matter. We select the optimal wireless technology based on range, bandwidth, and power budget.
Ultra-Low-Power Design
Multi-year battery life on AA/Li-SOCl2 cells. Sub-microamp deep sleep, duty-cycled sensing, energy-harvesting integration, and coulomb counting for predictive battery replacement.
Cloud-Native Architecture
Direct integration with AWS IoT Core, Azure IoT Hub, and GCP IoT Core. Device provisioning with X.509 certificates, device shadows, and OTA update pipelines built in from day one.
End-to-End Security
Hardware root of trust (ATECC608/STSAFE), secure element key storage, TLS 1.3 mutual authentication, signed firmware, and secure boot — defense in depth at every layer.
The IoT Hardware Stack
IoT hardware is fundamentally different from traditional embedded systems. It must operate reliably for years without physical access, often on battery power, while maintaining a secure connection to cloud infrastructure through unpredictable network conditions. At InnovChip, we approach IoT hardware design as a holistic discipline that spans silicon selection, RF engineering, power management, security architecture, and mechanical integration for environmental durability. We have designed IoT hardware for smart energy monitoring, cold-chain logistics, industrial predictive maintenance, agricultural soil sensing, and building automation — each with its own unique set of constraints and trade-offs.
The foundation of any IoT device is its wireless connectivity subsystem. For short-range, high-bandwidth applications (video streaming, local dashboards), we design with WiFi 6 (802.11ax) modules from Espressif (ESP32-C6) or Realtek, achieving 50+ Mbps throughput with WPA3 security. For medium-range personal area networks, BLE 5.3 (with direction finding and 2 Mbps PHY) on Nordic nRF52/nRF54 series provides mesh networking via Bluetooth Mesh or Thread/Matter for smart home interoperability. For long-range, low-bandwidth sensor networks, LoRa/LoRaWAN on Semtech SX126x/127x chipsets delivers 5-15 km range in rural environments with sub-100 mW transmit power. For cellular IoT, we integrate NB-IoT and LTE Cat-M1 modules (Quectel BG95/BG96, SIMCom SIM7000/7020) with eSIM/eUICC support for global deployment without physical SIM swapping.
Industrial IoT Gateways and Edge Computing
Beyond sensor nodes, we develop industrial IoT gateways that bridge legacy industrial equipment (PLC, Modbus RTU, CAN bus, 4-20 mA sensors) to modern cloud platforms. These gateways typically run Embedded Linux on i.MX 6ULL or STM32MP1 processors, with dual Ethernet ports (one for the OT network, one for IT/cloud), RS-485/RS-232/CAN interfaces, 4G LTE backup connectivity, and local data buffering with SQLite to survive cloud disconnections. We implement protocol translation in user space — Modbus RTU to MQTT with JSON payloads, CANopen to AWS IoT Device Shadow updates, OPC-UA client for direct PLC integration — with edge rule engines that can trigger local actions without cloud round-trip latency.
For compute-intensive edge applications (vibration FFT analysis, machine vision, anomaly detection), we design gateways with NPU-accelerated processors (NXP i.MX 8M Plus with 2.3 TOPS NPU, or Google Coral TPU modules) running TensorFlow Lite or ONNX Runtime for on-device inference. This enables real-time predictive maintenance decisions at the edge, reducing cloud bandwidth costs and eliminating the latency of round-trip cloud processing.
Power Architecture for IoT Longevity
Power consumption is the single most critical metric for battery-operated IoT devices. We optimize at every level: silicon selection (MCUs with sub-1 μA stop modes, radios with fast wake-up times), power supply design (nanoPower buck converters with 300 nA quiescent current, load switches to completely disconnect idle peripherals), firmware power management (tickless RTOS idle, opportunistic sensor sampling, dynamic TX power adjustment), and system-level duty cycling (wake on radio, wake on RTC alarm, wake on accelerometer interrupt). For a typical LoRaWAN temperature/humidity sensor reporting every 15 minutes, we achieve 5+ years on a single 2400 mAh Li-SOCl2 D-cell — a benchmark we validate through accelerated discharge testing in our lab.
Technologies We Master
LoRa / LoRaWAN
NB-IoT / LTE Cat-M1
Zigbee 3.0 / Thread
MQTT / MQTT-SN
AWS IoT / Azure IoT
ESP32 / nRF52 / nRF54
Modbus RTU/TCP ↔ MQTT
ATECC608 / STSAFE
eSIM / eUICC
Edge AI / TensorFlow Lite
i.MX 8M Plus NPU
OPC-UA
Build Your IoT Product with Us
Tell us about your use case — we architect the hardware, select the connectivity, and deliver a prototype that talks to your cloud.