Sigfox Technology Overview, as presented during the Cape Town Sigfox event on Nov 8th, 2017

1. Technology
Overview

2. Get in touch
Head of Technology Adoption @Sigfox
Email : nicolas.lesconnec@sigfox.com
Twitter : @nlesconnec

3. Sigfox basics

4. About Sigfox
Sigfox is not selling chips
Sigfox is not building connected solutions
Sigfox has invented a radio protocol
Sigfox operates a global network

5. About Sigfox
IoT Communication Service
Available in 36 countries as of Nov 1st
Low Energy + Simplicity
Chipsets from several major silicon vendors

7. 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

8. Sigfox architecture

9. Hardware
solutions

10. Hardware
Sigfox is not a hardware vendor
Ecosystem of established partners

11. Hardware
Sigfox is not a hardware vendor
Ecosystem of established partners & module makers

12. 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

13. 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

14. ST Micro - S2LP
Texas Instruments - CC1310
SMK - WF923
NXP - OL2385SF
Innocomm - SN10-11
Atmel - ATA8520D / ATA8520E
Silicon Labs - Si446x
Nemeus - MM002-xx-EU
Telecom Design - TD1207R / TD1208R
Texas Instruments - CC1125
Telecom 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-S
WISOL - SFM10R1
M2COMM - UPLYNX-M-RCZ1
Radiocrafts - RC1682-SIG 59
58
56
55
51
50
49
49
47
41
40
37
33
33
29
32
23
20
Power Consumption Comparison
Tx mode (mA), RC1/3
← Class 1 only

15. 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

16. Prototyping
Arduino & Raspberry Pi kits available from various
partners
Check out http://partners.sigfox.com for the full
details

17. 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 !

18. Antennas ( small feedback)
Antenna Price Size Integration Perf Indoor?
External YES
Internal wire YES
Ceramics NO
PCB printed YES

19. Communication

20. Core concepts

21. Simplicity
No connection
No configuration
No pairing
No signaling

22. Low Energy
Years of battery life
tens of mAmps while transmitting
idle (µAmps) 99.x%
Independent solutions
Reduce maintenance & TCO

23. Properties
Good indoor propagation
Simple 2-way communication
Long Range between emitter and receivers

24. 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

25. Two-way communication
Devices can receive updates sent from your
application server
Each communication is instigated by the device

26. Small messages
Useful payload: up to 12 bytes
Up to 140 times each day (contract)
100 bits/s

27. 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

28. 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

29. Security

30. 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

31. 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

32. Radio properties
Great tolerance to interferors
Jamming resistant
Interception is hard: UNB & frequency diversity

33. Jammers

34. Radio
Ultra Narrow Band

35. Sigfox use
The network currently monitors a 192KHz part of
the spectrum
Each message is ~100Hz wide

36. High capacity
192 KHz
Each repetition is 100Hz

37. 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.✓

38. Spectrum efficiency & capacity

39. Coverage

40. 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

42. 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

44. 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

45. Geolocation - Atlas service
Network based geolocation, using reception patterns &
machine learning
Receive lat/lng through callback, with a few km precision

46. Cloud

47. Get your data
View messages : Sigfox web platform
Get messages : REST API (pull)
Receive new messages : HTTP Callbacks (push)

49. 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, …

50. Downlink messages
A downlink message can be
Semi automatic : sent directly by the network
Custom : sent by your own application server