Matter, the latest wireless communication standard
Matter is an Internet Protocol (IP)-based communication standard for smart home technologies that helps create an open-source smart home; Where the products of different brands can communicate and share their data without any obstacles, and the problems related to the compatibility of products with each other do not exist anymore.
The Connectivity Standards Committee (CSA), as a leader in the field of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies in the world, has taken a new step towards introducing this innovation by presenting a comprehensive technical specification document of the Matter standard. For those interested in the field of Internet of Things to get more familiar with the features of this standard, in this article, we will briefly review the different chapters of this document.
The comprehensive technical specification document of the Matter standard
The comprehensive document of technical specifications of Matter is the most important and comprehensive document introducing this standard and consists of thirteen chapters. In order to have a general overview of the contents of this document, we invite you to read the rest of this article.
At the beginning of this document, the Connection Standards Committee (CSA) has emphasized that the permission to reproduce, print and publish this document is granted only to the members of the Connection Standards Alliance, and any use from this document for commercial purposes, it is necessary to obtain a written consent from this committee.
After that, by reviewing the titles of the list and the chapters of this document, it provides additional information for those interested in the field of technology and Internet of Things (IoT).
In the first chapter, after giving a short introduction and introducing the Matter standard, things like the goals of this document, abbreviations and their definitions and the sources used in its writing are mentioned.
Chapter 2 provides an overview of Matter's architecture, discussing in detail network topology, identifier types, IPv6 addressing, security, device setup, and system model constraints.
The third chapter introduces the concepts of cryptography, algorithms and protocol construction.
Check out Chapter 4 to learn more about secure channels. In this chapter, message types, protocols and methods of its exchange, IPv6 availability and network configuration requirements and security processing of incoming and outgoing messages are explained in detail.
The purpose of the fifth chapter titled Setup is to define the Onboarding Payload requirements in order to obtain permission to install the device on the Matter network. This chapter also examines the display and encoding of the payload, which is manually placed as a QR Code and in the form of content in an NFC tag.
In the sixth chapter, cryptographic procedures and credits related to establishing trust between entities are described. The device certification and measurement section provide mechanisms for administrators that enable them to verify the validity of a Node's certificate before sharing information.
The seventh chapter of the comprehensive technical specification document of the Matter standard examines the data model, and it can also be called the meta model. This data model is finally implemented in the application layer of a communication stack. In fact, this chapter defines first-order elements for endpoints, clusters, and data types.
In the eighth chapter and in continuation of what was mentioned in the previous chapter, the characteristics of the interactive model are described in detail and the interactions, transactions and actions between the nodes are also examined.
The ninth chapter under the title of system model specifications has analyzed and investigated the relationships between endpoints and clusters.
The coding specification of the interactive model is given in the tenth chapter. This specification describes in detail the interaction model (IM) encoding in the Matter TLV format.
In the eleventh chapter, service and device management is reviewed; Where useful information is provided in relation to the necessary features and events in order to determine the basic information about the Nodes.
The twelfth chapter examines the Multiple Fabric feature. This feature allows a Node to connect to multiple Fabrics that are managed independently. Using this feature, an administrator can allow another fabric to run that node in its fabric with user consent.
In the thirteenth (last) chapter, the security requirements of the Matter standard are mentioned. These requirements are categorized by topic and typically address all devices and nodes. Among these, some requirements are specifically called for a certain group of implementations or roles.
It should be noted that the comprehensive technical specification document of the Matter standard consists of seven appendices, where things such as encryption format, status report messages, object identifiers, etc. can be seen in these appendices.
