Connectivity Standards Alliance Matter: State of the art and opportunities
Dimitri Belli, Paolo Barsocchi, Filippo Palumbo
Abstract
Matter is an open-source, royalty-free connectivity standard developed by the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA-IoT). It aims to unify smart home devices and increase their compatibility across various ecosystems. Backed by major tech companies like Apple, Google, Amazon, and the Zigbee Alliance, Matter simplifies the development of IoT devices by providing a unified approach to connectivity. It offers a secure, reliable, and seamless way for devices to communicate and interact, regardless of the manufacturer. This paper aims to present the current state of adoption of the Matter specification by devices available on the market, and the certification process by the available software. It describes the main characteristics of Matter in its Specification 1.0 state, reviewing the features and functionalities of the Matter protocol, as well as the opportunities for its use and the challenges for its large-scale adoption in Matter-compliant IoT devices. We discuss the impact of Matter on IoT technologies and ecosystems, providing guidance for manufacturers and consumers. We analyze the emerging research challenges in its adoption and propose our recommendations on how to improve and extend this protocol for better use in the future.