sigfox
I had the opportunity, today, to be at the sigfox kickoff day, in Toulouse, with the company I work for. This is an opportunity to post a summary of the technology as it is today.
Sigfox is a network operator for Internet Of Things running on free frequency band (868Mhz in France). Sigfox is deploying itself network in some countries like France. In some other they have partner to deploy it like arquiva in UK (on going actually 10 biggest cities); abertis in Spain, Aerea in Netherland. Actually some European cities are also deployed as pilot : Munich, Menlo, Milan, Warsaw, Dublin, Autria. San Fransisco & Silicon Valley will come soon this year. The target is to have 60 countries in the next 5 Years. Thanks to the long range radio characteristic of the network, Spain has been deployed in 7 months. As to now, the network does not includes roaming constraints & fee. A French licensed device works in any country where the network exists.
The network is high sensitivity with 2 way communication 140 *12 bytes messages a day uplink / 4 * 8 bytes messages downlink. Each of the messages are sent 3 times on different frequency to ensure it will be delivered. The devices are running ultra low energy with 10-25mW radio power. The technology is plug & play : you do not have any peering process to accomplish to make it works (but you have to activate the device in the backend at least…). Data are sent to a global backend whatever the network provider you are passing through and you have contract with. This backend will let you have access to your data in real time and will execute callback (data post) to you own specific backend to proceed your data.
Limits : due to low bandwidth / small messages architecture, the technology does not allow voice, video … transfer for sure. But it is really fitting security, smart cities (traffic, parking waste, street lights…) monitoring, automatic meter reading, leak detection, billing automation…, tracking & security, healthcare (fall detection, distress buttons…), Agriculture.
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Connected cars and autonomous vehicles are two of the main topics discussed during the CES2016. Probably not the most review during CES as it still an industrial topic more than a consumer one at this time. In fact if we are on the way and we start to see some of the benefits for our safety, the roadmap is not for this year but for 2020 and 2030 depending on the steps. What is really interesting this year in CES is we have the first roadmaps I ever saw. We also had many actors running the same direction to make it a reality. This first post is presenting what I’ve learned around autonomous and driverless vehicles during the different CES sessions in 2016.
