Arduino Portenta gets an LTE Cat. M1/NB IoT GNSS shield

Arduino PRO Portenta family of industrial boards is getting a new LTE Cat. M1/NB-IoT GNSS shield that adds global connectivity and positioning capabilities through the Cinterion TX62-W LPWAN IoT module by Thales.

The shield works with the Portenta H7 board as well as its lower-cost variants and Arduino MKR boards and will power industry 4.0 and edge computing solutions such as positioning, asset tracking, and remote monitoring applications at the factory, in agriculture, public utilities, and smart cities.

Portenta CatM1 shield specifications:

Cinterion TX62-W module with:
- 3GPP Rel.14 Cat.M1, Cat.NB1, Cat.NB2
- Global coverage with a single SKU
- FDD-LTE Bands – 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 12, 13, 18, 19, 20, 25, 26, 27, 28, 66, 71, 85
- LTE Cat. M1 – DL: max. 300 kbps, UL: max. 1.1 Mbps
- LTE Cat. NB1 – DL: max. 27 kbps, UL: max. 63 kbps
- LTE Cat. NB2 – DL: max. 124 kbps, UL: max. 158 kbps
- Efficient PSM and eDRX
- Power Class 20 dBm
- Embedded GNSS – GPS, BeiDou, Galileo, GLONASS
- NanoSIM card socket and embedded SIM (eSIM)
- Security – Secure boot, TLS 1.3 / DTLS 1.2, secure key store with pre-integrated trusted identities
Antenna – 1x u.FL antenna connector for LTE IoT, 1x u.FL antenna connector for GNSS
Dimensions – Compatible with STM32H7 based Portenta H7 boards

You can create a small multiprotocol router (WiFi – BT + LTE Cat. M1 / NB-IoT), run TinyML-enabled scenarios where position and sensor values trigger other connected subsystem actions, and the board should support cloud platforms such as Arduino IoT Cloud, AWS IoT Core, or Azure IoT Hub.

Going into more details about the applications, Arduino and Thales say Mobility-as-a-Service solutions can track, analyze and dynamically manage their eet to optimize fuel usage, increase client satisfaction, reduce transport times, enable predictive maintenance, and leverage remote diagnostics to ensure minimal downtime, while Smart Agriculture applications include gas detection, optical sensing, machinery alarm systems, and biological bug traps. Smart Cities may benefit from the shield for transportation systems (e.g. parking), sanitation (trash bin levels), water metering, street lighting, and so on.

The Portenta LTE Cat M.1/NB-IoT GNSS shield is available for purchase from the Arduino store and/or the company’s network of approved resellers for €73.00/US$87.60. A few more details may be found on the product page. Thales & Arduino will also host a webinar on February 23, 2022, 9:00 and 17:00 CET with a detailed product overview, outline the benefits and discuss potential use cases.

Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)

Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.