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 Skills needed Cheapest solution

for industrialisation Ref.Designs Skills++ needed

Certification
program
 Modules architectures
AT Modem / no SDK API Module / with SDK Multi-connectivity

Extra-MCU required No extra-MCU required No extra MCU required

Transceiver MCU Transceiver MCU MCU

Transceiver MCU MCU

TX App TX Protocol App

TX Protocol
RX Protocol RX Sigfox Lib BLE
App

RX Sigfox Lib Sigfox Lib + ID / Key

+ ID / Key WIFI
+ ID / Key
GPS
Power Consumption Comparison
Tx mode (mA), RC1/3
ST Micro - S2LP 20
Texas Instruments - CC1310 23 ← Class 1 only
SMK - WF923 32
NXP - OL2385SF 29
Innocomm - SN10-11 33
Atmel - ATA8520D / ATA8520E 33
Silicon Labs - Si446x 37
Nemeus - MM002-xx-EU 40
Telecom Design - TD1207R / TD1208R 41
Texas Instruments - CC1125 47
Telecom Design - TD1204 49
ON-Semi - AX-SFEU-1-01-TX30 49
ATIM - ARM-P8 / ARM-N8-Sigfox 50
ON-Semi - AX-SF10-MINI21-868-B1 51
Telit - LE51-868-S 55
WISOL - SFM10R1 56
M2COMM - UPLYNX-M-RCZ1 58
Radiocrafts - RC1682-SIG 59
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

Each repetition is 100Hz

192 KHz
High resilience to interferers

Anti-jamming capabilities due to UNB intrinsic ruggedness

coupled with spatial diversity of the base stations (+20dB)

✓ 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

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<=> ? @ABC
&'()*
+,-./ DE
Countries
012 FGH
34567
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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