Zetifi’s technology enables farmers and other rural residents to access, extend and optimise coverage from existing radio, cellular or satellite networks, leading to more reliable remote area connectivity in areas where phone coverage is otherwise unreliable or unavailable.
The company’s long-range Wi-Fi coverage extension products address a major barrier to the digitalisation of agriculture and have been recognised as a foundational technology to unlock significant value from on-farm digital technologies.
Morse Micro’s Wi-Fi HaLow technology will help to enhance Zetifi’s farm-wide Wi-Fi connectivity solutions - the ZetiCell and ZetiRover - by leveraging the long-range capabilities of Wi-Fi HaLow, giving more farmers the ability to embrace precision agriculture and remote monitoring and prepare for the introduction of connectivity-dependent autonomous machinery.
“The Internet of Things is revolutionising farming, and now Wi-Fi HaLow - the first version of Wi-Fi optimised for the IoT - is helping Zetifi deliver on the promise of smart, connected farming technology,” said Dan Winson, CEO and founder of Zetifi. “Our collaboration with Morse Micro is a defining moment in Zetifi’s mission to bring digital advancements to modern farming through remote-area connectivity.”
Zetifi currently offers two core products that enable farm-wide Wi-Fi connectivity possibilities:
- ZetiCell – a long-range Wi-Fi small cell installed on farmhouses or machinery sheds
- ZetiRover – a vehicle-mounted roaming Wi-Fi hotspot used on off-farm passenger vehicles or farm machinery.
The ZetiRover can be moved easily between vehicles and features fully-integrated antennas and dual modems that enable seamless backhaul connections to multiple cellular and Wi-Fi networks. This multi-carrier functionality provides redundancy and extra coverage options to fill in more coverage gaps in remote areas. Crucially, it also enables a Wi-Fi link back to a private ZetiCell, enabling the ZetiRover to repeat Wi-Fi from a cellular or satellite ZetiCell connection up to three kilometers away.
While the ZetiRover currently uses 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi to create the vital link between the ZetiCell and ZetiRover, this link, while adequate, can easily be disrupted by natural obstacles such as trees or hilly terrain.
To address those issues, the next-generation of ZetiRover and ZetiCell products will incorporate Morse Micro’s long-range, sub-GHz Wi-Fi HaLow technology for direct connections to HaLow-enabled cameras and sensors, and to create more penetrative mesh connections between Zetifi devices.
Commenting Prakash Guda, Vice President of Marketing and Product Management at Morse Micro, said, “This collaboration is a crucial step in the evolution of IoT agriculture by extending the wireless range and expanding the coverage of Zetifi’s connectivity solutions for farm equipment operating in remote areas.”
Morse Micro’s comprehensive Wi-Fi HaLow portfolio includes the industry’s smallest, fastest and lowest power IEEE 802.11ah compliant SoCs. The MM6108 SoC supports 1, 2, 4 and 8 MHz bandwidth and can deliver tens of Mbps throughput to support streaming HD video.
Morse Micro’s Wi-Fi HaLow SoCs provide 10x the range, 100x the coverage area and 1000x the volume of traditional Wi-Fi solutions.
