Matter 1.4.2: the Journey of the Autonomous Home

The Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA) has released Matter 1.4.2, taking a significant step forward in the evolution of the Matter standard. This update focuses on enhancing security, scalability and user experience, including key additions such as Wi-Fi commissioning. These new features aim to make the smart home more efficient and intuitive.

Since Matter's initial release in November 2022, the CSA has continued to strengthen and progress toward enabling reliable and simple-to-use smart homes. Matter 1.4.2-the latest release-enhances security and scalability with several enhancements that are briefly summarized in the table below.

One key enhancement of the latest release-Wi-Fi commissioning-is a new feature for Matter. Previously, Matter devices had only one option to commission devices onto the Matter network-Bluetooth Low Energy (LE). While this works well for many device types, it does present a challenge for device types when Bluetooth LE is not needed for the application itself, creating additional cost and complexity. For example, large appliances such as laundry washers and dryers may already have Wi-Fi implemented to connect to the Internet, but they do not have compelling use cases for Bluetooth LE. It also gives device makers a way to bring new capabilities to their Wi-Fi-only home devices by deploying Matter through a simple firmware update.

The CSA Matter Working Group and the Wi-Fi Alliance collaborated to provide a solution for these types of use cases and requirements for enabling Matter devices to be on-boarded using Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi has a new feature called Unsynchronized Service Discovery that uses a lightweight device-to-device service discovery and message exchanges without relying on device synchronization.

Through NXP's complete Matter portfolio, we provide implementations that support Thread, Wi-Fi and/or Ethernet with our Tri-Radio solutions, such as the RW612 Wireless microcontroller unit (MCU) (or IW612) and IW610 System on Chip (SOC), as well as our MCX W Wireless MCUs that address the variety of device types and use cases that Matter encompasses. As Matter has continued to expand support for devices, we identified the need for this capability especially in devices that typically use only Wi-Fi such as appliances. In collaboration with the CSA and Wi-Fi Alliance, the NXP team contributed resources to developing Wi-Fi commissioning, and with a demo of this feature, we have seen positive feedback from the market..

See the table below for a snapshot of the Matter platforms offered by NXP: