Technology Overview

Get in touch

Head of Technology Adoption @Sigfox

Email : nicolas.lesconnec@sigfox.com

Twitter : @nlesconnec

Sigfox basics

About Sigfox

Sigfox is not selling chips

Sigfox is not building connected solutions

Sigfox has invented a radio protocol

Sigfox operates a global network

About Sigfox

IoT Communication Service

Available in 36 countries as of Nov 1st

Low Energy + Simplicity

Chipsets from several major silicon vendors

Why Sigfox ?

Need for a solution dedicated to the IoT, not an existing one tweaked for it.

We only serve the IoT, that’s why we’re doing it efficiently

Sigfox architecture

Hardware solutions

Hardware

Sigfox is not a hardware vendor

Ecosystem of established partners

Hardware

Sigfox is not a hardware vendor

Ecosystem of established partners & module makers

Modules

Starting from $2

Offers combining Sigfox with Wifi , BLE, GPS

Fast track for product certification

Quite expensive

for industrialisation

Skills needed

Ref.Designs

Cheapest solution

Skills++ needed

Certification

program

AT Modem / no SDK

Extra-MCU required

API Module / with SDK

No extra-MCU required

Multi-connectivity

No extra MCU required

Modules architectures

MCU

App

BLE

WIFI

GPS

MCU

Protocol

Sigfox Lib

+ ID / Key

Transceiver

TX

RX

MCU

App

Transceiver

Protocol

Sigfox Lib

+ ID / Key

TX

RX

MCU Transceiver

Protocol

Sigfox Lib+ ID / Key

TX

RX

MCU

App

ST Micro - S2LP

Texas Instruments - CC1310

SMK - WF923

NXP - OL2385SFInnocomm - SN10-11

Atmel - ATA8520D / ATA8520E

Silicon Labs - Si446x

Nemeus - MM002-xx-EU

Telecom Design - TD1207R / TD1208R

Texas Instruments - CC1125Telecom Design - TD1204

ON-Semi - AX-SFEU-1-01-TX30

ATIM - ARM-P8 / ARM-N8-Sigfox

ON-Semi - AX-SF10-MINI21-868-B1

Telit - LE51-868-SWISOL - SFM10R1

M2COMM - UPLYNX-M-RCZ1

Radiocrafts - RC1682-SIG 5958

5655

5150

4949

4741

4037

3333

2932

2320

Power Consumption ComparisonTx mode (mA), RC1/3

← Class 1 only

Building your own

You can build your own, using one of the compatible RF transceivers (NXP, STMicro, TI, Semtech, SiLabs)

Only interesting for huge volumes, retrofit or special requirements

Will need full Sigfox certification program

Prototyping

Arduino & Raspberry Pi kits available from various partners

Check out http://partners.sigfox.com for the full details

Antenna

Best way to ruin a great device is to mess the antenna integration

Balance between design & performance

Take into account from the early days of your project

We’re here to help with experts !

Antennas ( small feedback)

Antenna Price Size Integration Perf Indoor?

External YES

Internal wire YES

Ceramics NO

PCB printed YES

Communication

Core concepts

Simplicity

No connection

No configuration

No pairing

No signaling

Low Energy

Years of battery life

tens of mAmps while transmitting

idle (µAmps) 99.x%

Independent solutions

Reduce maintenance & TCO

Properties

Good indoor propagation

Simple 2-way communication

Long Range between emitter and receivers

Very Long Range

Best case scenario

+100km between transmitter & receiver (base station)

Real life

A few kms (city) to tens of kms (countryside), depending on the topography

Two-way communication

Devices can receive updates sent from your application server

Each communication is instigated by the device

Small messages

Useful payload: up to 12 bytes

Up to 140 times each day (contract)

100 bits/s

Less is more !

GPS coordinates (lat x lng) : 6 bytes

Temperature: 2 bytes

State reporting : 1 byte

Heartbeat, update request : 0 byte

Keep it as simple as possible

Keep it simple

Useful payload up to 12 bytes

No multimedia, no TCP/IP, no JSON, no XML …

Get down to binary : 2^96 possible values

Lightweight frames means shorter emission times

Security

Security

No keys exchanged over the network, no handshake

Messages can be encrypted or scrambled

Each message is signed with a key unique to the device

Message Signature

With each message, a hash is calculated & sent; using:

Device ID

Secret key, unique to the device. Never transmitted OTA

Payload

Internal increment

Radio properties

Great tolerance to interferors

Jamming resistant

Interception is hard: UNB & frequency diversity

Jammers

Radio Ultra Narrow Band

Sigfox use

The network currently monitors a 192KHz part of the spectrum

Each message is ~100Hz wide

High capacity

192 KHz

Each repetition is 100Hz

Anti-jamming capabilities due to UNB intrinsic ruggedness coupled with spatial diversity of the base stations (+20dB)

High resilience to interferers

For the same technical reasons as above, UNB is extremely robust in an environment with other spread spectrum signals. However, Spread spectrum networks are affected by UNB signals.✓

Spectrum efficiency & capacity

Coverage

Global network

Sigfox is offering a global network, not a solution to build private networks

Roaming is included is the standard service

Devices will work the same all over the network

Sigfox Radio Zones

RC1 RC2 RC3 RC4

Frequency 868 MHz 902 MHz 923 MHz 920 MHz

Power output 14 dBm 22 dBm 14 dBm 22 dBm

Countries

! " # $ %

& ' ( ) *

+ , - . /

0 1 2

3 4 5 6 7

8 9 : ;

<=> ? @ABC DE FGH

Testing tools

• SDR Dongle • End to End testing (not for prod)

• RSA (Radio Signal Analyzer) • Included in SDR dongle

• Test radio compliance

• Litepoint analyzer IQxel-M • RF testing (WiFi, BLE, Sigfox)

• Manufacturing tests

• Pre-certification

Geolocation - Atlas service

Network based geolocation, using reception patterns & machine learning

Receive lat/lng through callback, with a few km precision

Cloud

Get your data

View messages : Sigfox web platform

Get messages : REST API (pull)

Receive new messages : HTTP Callbacks (push)

Callbacks

Each message received from your devices will be forwarded to your application server(s)

Fully customizable HTTP requests

Used to send data back to the device as well

Easy integration with major Cloud solutions :

AWS, MS Azure, IBM, Samsung, SAP, theThings.io, Thingworx, …

Downlink messages

A downlink message can be

Semi automatic : sent directly by the network

Custom : sent by your own application server