As there are increasingly more MEMS, sensors and energy harvesting technologies on the market, it is important to understand newly available communications technologies to transmit data wirelessly. We recently spoke with Cees Links, founder and CEO of GreenPeak Technologies. His company is based in the Netherlands and raised $19 million in October 2009 in a venture capital funding round led by Robert Bosch Venture Capital and supported by DFJ Esprit, Motorola Ventures and Allegro Investment Fund.
MEMS Investor Journal: What does your company do? How does your business relate to MEMS, sensors and energy harvesting technologies?
Cees Links: GreenPeak is a semiconductor company. We develop and market communication controller chips for wireless sense and control networks and consumer electronics.
GreenPeak does not develop the actual applications, but supplies the communication chip, software and reference designs to help our customers efficiently integrate our chips into their applications.
GreenPeak’s communication chips are designed to work with any form of energy harvesting, whether it is burst (like a light switch) or trickle (like a solar). We can also work with batteries. Because of our unique chip's architecture and extremely low energy consumption we can run applications off a single coin cell battery that will outlast the lifetime of the device it is powering. This saves cost, allows for a more elegant design and takes away the maintenance problem since batteries no longer need frequent replacements. In addition, this is a green solution. Batteries are packed with heavy metals and toxic chemicals. For example, within the remote control market, we estimate we can reduce the amount of batteries consumed by 90%.
MEMS Investor Journal: Why are you better than your competitors?
Cees Links: We are better than our competitors because, for typical sense and control networks, our energy consumption is a factor 5 to 10 times lower compared to the competition, without compromising range or performance. This enables us to run a remote control, or a sensor node on a single battery for 5 to 10 times as long, increasing a typical battery life of 2 years to 10 or even 20 years with the same range 30-50 meters (indoor) or 300-500m (outdoor) and the same data rate (250Kb/s) as expected.
MEMS Investor Journal: Who are your main competitors?
Cees Links: This would be different for every possible application we consider. For RF remote control applications that would be Freescale and Texas Instruments.
MEMS Investor Journal: What is the power consumption of your chips? How does this compare with competition?
Cees Links: The power consumption is dependent on the application and the usage model: different types of chips and the different architecture approach in a specific solution make it impossible to compare merely chip features such as power consumption. Since the communication chip is just one component in, for example, a remote control, it would be more interesting to compare total application solution features, application test results and total bill of materials, where GreenPeak consistently scores best-in-class.
The GreenPeak Emerald GP500C typically uses only 10-15% of the energy of comparable products and gives a 6 to 10 times longer battery life. Active energy consumption: 150 microJoule per packet compared to 500 microJoule typical. Sleep current : less than 100 nA compared to 1 μA typical.
MEMS Investor Journal: Which specific market segment are you targeting first? Why?
Cees Links: We are targeting the market of home automation and building automation.
For the home automation market, GreenPeak believes that remote controls are the enablers of a quick ZigBee RF4CE (Radio Frequency for Consumer Electronics) market adoption and a natural starting point. An RF4CE remote control with GreenPeak's ultra low power radio technology can become the central dashboard for a home's entire entertainment, automation, HVAC, security and health monitoring systems.
Service providers are very interested in the set top box and remote control combination, as it will enable them to market additional services to the homeowner in addition to entertainment.
The ZigBee RF4CE standard is a single radio worldwide standard platform that has originally been established for remote controls, but enables other consumer electronics applications to plug into this as well since other home applications like switching on/off or dimming the lights, opening the curtains, locking the doors, adjusting the heating or the air-conditioning.
We believe that eventually ZigBee RF4CE based applications will become an established presence in homes. This is the so-called "Third Wireless Home Network", joining the home cordless phone network and the Wi-Fi wireless internet network.
MEMS Investor Journal: Remote controls are very cheap already. How much does your chip cost and how does this compare with the cost of a normal IR remote control transmitter?
Cees Links: For low-end remote controls, GreenPeak’s solution (based on a single layer PCB) allows for a very low cost BOM (Bill of Material) of less than $2 approaching the current price of traditional IR remote controls. When adding in all the advantages of RF based remote controls – for example, two-way communication, no line-of-sight restrictions and a much better range – the decision to switch to ZigBee RF4CE remote controls becomes obvious. In addition, other benefits include the ability to hard wire the battery inside the board which means that they no longer have to design and develop battery compartments and lids. An added benefit is that this enables the remote control design to come up with new designs and shapes that are not limited by the form factor of the batteries and the need to regularly replace them.
MEMS Investor Journal: What about integration costs? Will the remote control manufacturers have a major problem designing in your RF transmitted instead of the usual IR units?
Cees Links: We have a set of reference designs for this new generation of RF remote controls to provide the CE manufacturers with an efficient integration process into hosts such as TVs, DVDs and set-top boxes. Our applications team works closely with our customers to obtain the most competitive solution in the market.
Initially, for remote controls, RF will be offered in combination with IR to allow compatibility with other devices. We expect total market adoption and full replacement of IR by RF remote controls within the coming 2-3 years.
MEMS Investor Journal: How big is the remote control market segment for your component category?
Cees Links: Approximately 1 billion units per year.
MEMS Investor Journal: What are the main three objections that you are hearing from your potential customers for this application?
Cees Links: In the first place, the concern about potential Wi-Fi interference. In reality this is a non-issue, because the large number of channels available for Wi-Fi and ZigBee RF4CE makes it easy to avoid this. On top of that, the Wi-Fi interference rejection of the GreenPeak chip is world class, so even if there is a stressed situation there is no visible degradation.
In the second place there is the concern about cost, as RF is more expensive than IR. The GreenPeak solution is highly integrated so the cost delta of the total design is very limited and clearly outweighed by the advantages that were mentioned before.
The transition from IR to RF is a challenge. As I mentioned earlier, initially for remote controls, RF will be offered in combination with IR to allow compatibility with other devices. We expect total market adoption and full replacement of IR by RF remote controls within 2-3 years.
MEMS Investor Journal: For sensor networks, can you provide some examples where your devices are already being used?
Cees Links: Our devices are being used in remote controls, in lighting and in security applications as part of a general home and building control solution. Our chips are integrated into remote controls and set top boxes used in variety of rollouts and tests are being conducted by several major service providers in the US and worldwide.
MEMS Investor Journal: How is your technology different from other RFID chip and wireless sensor network providers?
Cees Links: Active as well as passive RFID solutions do not allow two-way communication. RFID is thus not suitable for the control of sensor networks and remote controls.
Our solution focuses on ultra low power solutions that are maintenance-free by using energy harvesting or a battery of which the life time exceeds the product lifespan, and a lowest cost total BOM to allow the replacement of IR in traditional remote controls and other residential and home automation applications.
MEMS Investor Journal: Have you shipped to any customers in volume or are you only shipping samples for now?
Cees Links: We have shipped a significant number of samples and with some customers we are now starting to ramp volume. We cannot disclose customer names as we are bound by non-disclosure agreements, it is upon these customers to disclose their technology provider.
MEMS Investor Journal: What are top three problems that your customers are encountering with samples? What is not working for them?
Cees Links: The only challenge is that of serving legacy IR based systems. As mentioned earlier, the first units will have to include both IR and RF radios so that older generation IR systems and products can be controlled by the new generation of ZigBee RF4CE powered remotes.
Customers are not experiencing problems. The advantage is that users are used to wireless remote controls (IR) already, so the (RF) usage model is completely similar.
However, the better range, ease of use and the fact that one does not have to point and shoot are important real world benefits that once experienced, customers will not want to let go of.
MEMS Investor Journal: Where did your company's technology come from?
Cees Links: All of GreenPeak’s technology is internally developed and we maintain a strong patent portfolio. The background of the team is with AT&T and Lucent, inventing Wi-Fi.
The focus of the team here is to redefine the world of sense and control networks by making them totally maintenance free, that means, or running on energy harvesting, or running on batteries, but where the battery life time exceeds the life time of the product.
MEMS Investor Journal: How will the funds from this latest VC round be deployed? What are your main goals for 2010?
Cees Links: The main goal of the VC round is to expand distribution channels and to optimize production to further ramp volume. Our main goals for 2010 are to get ZigBee RF4CE accepted in the market as mainstream and leverage our unique product features to establish a significant market share, leading the company to profitability.
MEMS Investor Journal: What is your strategy on expanding distribution channels? How is your distribution currently structured?
Cees Links: We focus on the markets that steer innovation and typically drive market adoption: US, Southeast Asia and Europe. We work with our GreenPeak business development team and a network of local distributors.
Copyright 2010 MEMS Investor Journal
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