The new Wireless GPRS technology provided by the new the Telit GM862-GPRS, GPRS module, allows M2M (machine to machine) communications to be delivered through the internet network, allowing access to the remote resources virtually from anywhere in the world in the same manner as we would open an internet site. The applications that are going to benefit from this new internet capability are a multitude: monitoring devices, fleet management devices, vending machines, security systems, POS terminals and many other distributed systems.

Using GPRS technology in the embedded world is becoming a growing challenge that involves hardware and software designers. The embedded controllers usually are required to implement in their code all the PPP/TCP/IP stack in order to gain access to the internet through the GPRS modules. This requirement introduces several drawbacks:

The most limiting issue to the diffusion of the GPRS applications on the embedded world is the required knowledge of all the PPP/TCP/IP protocols and internet workarounds. This knowledge is not usually part of the embedded designer background and represents an obstacle, especially for low cost applications that cannot affort the expense of a long study phase.

The only way to overcome this limit is to implement the TCP/IP protocol stack inside the GPRS device, providing access to its resources in some manner. One possible solution is to provide the embedded user with a set of API's that interface the TCP/IP protocol stack inside the GPRS device to the external embedded controller. This approach has the major advantage of a full control over the TCP/IP, with the drawback that the TCP/IP protocol and internet background knowledge is still a requirement for the embedded designer.

DAI Telecom has gone further on with the new Telit GM862-GPRS, developing the new feature Easy GPRS that not only relieves the embedded designer from the TCP/IP code writing, but completely automates the TCP/IP stack interface management inside its GPRS products, making the internet access simple as dialing a phone number.

This simplicity is accomplished by providing an "internet dial" command that makes the GPRS device do all the work and finally provide a virtual serial link with the application layer of the other peer entity, as if the internet application is directly exchanging data on the embedded controller serial port. For this reason we call it "Virtual serial link".

This is shown in the next picture, where the Easy GPRS layer in the controller device is perfectly transparent to the data during the connection as if it is not present:

This new Easy GPRS feature will allow every embedded application, also the smallest one, to connect to the internet with ease of use and convenience. The major advantages of the Easy GPRS are:

The embedded world now has means of entering the internet world thanks to the new Easy GPRS!

For additional information: ci-gm862@telital.com

Fabio Deperini