Future Thread Low-Power Mesh Wireless Network Technology Implementation

Freescale Semiconductor's FRDM-K64F board, which works with ARM® mbed™, supports ARM mbed IoT (Internet of Things) device platform technology, including ARM's latest mbed OS operating system.

According to Freescale, the FRDM launched this year -The K64F board implements an end-to-end mbed solution and works with complementary mbed technologies, including mbed OS, mbed Client, mbed Device Connector Service, and related mbed tools.

With this new mbed OS support, Freescale serves as the processing platform for two of the company’s “IoT end device-to-cloud” solutions for mbed: the ARM mbed IoT Starter Kit for IBM® IoT Foundation and the ARM mbed solution for Microsoft Azure IoT Suite .
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Freescale also recently contributed its advanced FNET TCP/IP software stack to the mbed ecosystem. This software will form the basis of the mbed TCP/IP stack and serve as a central link to the ARM mbed OS architecture.


“The ARM mbed IoT device platform fills a critical gap by providing a comprehensive, standards-based platform for microcontrollers,” said Geoff Lees, vice president and general manager, Freescale MCU Group. “mbed enables customers to accelerate time to market using off-the-shelf technology that supports critical IoT requirements, such as connectivity and robust security.”


“Freescale’s FRDM-K64F has been an invaluable test platform during our internal prototyping development and validation of mbed OS with other mbed IoT device platform features,” said Zach Shelby, vice president of marketing for ARM’s IoT business unit. “The feedback we’ve received from mbed developers implementing their designs using the Freescale FRDM platform has also been very positive. We expect to see more next-generation designs based on FRDM-K64F that can be applied to various IoT applications,” he said.

Easily add wireless capabilities to the Freescale Freedom FRDM-K64F board

The Freescale Freedom FRDM-CR20A development board for the MCR20A 2.4GHz wireless transceiver pairs with the mbed Enabled™ Freescale FRDM-K64F to form an mbed-ready solution. The FRDM-CR20A board provides a low-power 802.15.4 radio that, when combined with the FRDM-K64F board, forms the foundation for a fully functional, wireless, cloud-connected IoT platform and can enable emerging technologies including Thread low-power mesh wireless networks.

“Zebra Technologies selected Freescale’s FRDM-K64F as one of their first IoT reference cases to work with Zatar, our mbed Enabled cloud service for IoT, because of its broad support for the ARM mbed ecosystem,” said Thomas Kurian, senior director, Emerging Growth Platforms, Zebra. “We look forward to working with Freescale to help customers leverage chip-to-cloud reference designs for IoT.”