Internet of Things networks
Here we are, in the last days of 2015, and I’m excited to say now Internet of Things networks are spreading worldwide, and now, you are able to build IoT products connected to country-related networks.
In Europe
As I am French, this article will undoubtedly focus on French and Europe networks, as frequency rules are not the same worldwide.
Sigfox
As a French, I am very proud of Sigfox, which managed to bring Ultra Narrow Band technology to IoT purposes, and offers an innovative approach to IoT networks.
As you may already now, Sigfox is now what I call a big company, not only because they raised 100 millions € in February (2015), but also because they can spread faster than anyone before (and they conclude a partnership with Samsung, too).
If you don’t know already Sigfox, you can see it as a network dedicated to IoT, with very low speed and payload, which allows designing systems running for years on batteries.
At this time, Sigfox is already deployed in France, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, Denmark, Ireland, and UK.
Some cities are also connected, like Munich, Stockholm, Warsaw …
In the US, San Francisco is already covered, and some major cities too. They are spreading very fast concluding partnerships with SNO (Sigfox Network Operator).
One of the biggest advantage of Sigfox is roaming.
In fact, you can design an object, with a modem using one frequency (868MHz in Europe, 915MHz in US), and it is automatically compatible with Sigfox network on a continent
Technically, Sigfox uses the UNB (Ultra Narrow Band) technology, to transmit data through free frequencies, which allows them not to pay fees. But this advantage comes with a “Golden” rule, not overpassing rules devolving this frequencies, in order to respect spectrum, as it is available for everyone.
Practically, it means that you cannot exceed a certain talking time (1% of total time), imposing a limit of 140 messages per day (from object to the cloud).
Sigfox provides you a great experience because not only they are very developer and maker friendly, but also they deal easily with big companies.
If you are interested in SigFox, I suggest you to go here, there is even a Sigfox makers tour to get started with that technology in an half-day (with an Arduino starter kit), (and btw, Sigfox startup-related guys are very friendly).
LoRa
LoRa is an alliance to bring Wide Area Networks to IoT.
This alliance is composed of 3 kinds of members :
- sponsors : Founding members, Big Tech companies that contributes to LoRa network part (ex : Bouygues, Cisco, Ibm, Semtech)
- contributors : companies that manufactures modem and hardware solutions (ex : Adeunis, Gemalto, Microchip …)
- adopters : companies that integrates hardware, making final product (ex : Keysight, Libelium …)
This alliance allows gathering of various actors and making it progress quickly.
LoRa is quite different from Sigfox, by the fact that LoRa is adaptable, supporting more bandwidth (but also more power consumption).
In fact, there is 3 classes of LoRa :
- Class A : Bi-directional end-devices : each end-device’s uplink transmission is followed by two short downlink receive windows.
- Class B : Bi-directional end-devices with scheduled receive slots : Class A with open extra receive windows at scheduled times.
- Class C : Bi-directional end-devices with maximal receive slots : Class B with nearly continuously open receive windows, only closed when transmitting.
Conclusion
As a conclusion, I think that these 2 networks are really well designed, with pros and cons, but, Sigfox is most constrained and “Worldwide”, while LoRa is more open and gets different modes and Country-related.