Sigfox Network Research Articles

Performance analysis of Sigfox deployment

Low-power wide area network (LPWAN) has become a promising communication technology as alternative solutions on long range communications, low power consumption and low cost that overcome the problems faced by traditional communications. An example of LPWAN technology is Sigfox that uses a zero generation (0G) technology. However, there is not many literatures discussed on this technology especially on its applications. The objective of this paper is to study the coverage of Sigfox in Malaysia by tracing its network coverage using a Sigfox module that is integrated with an Arduino microprocessor. In this paper, we reported the experiments performed on real device and field test as well as observed the performance of the proposed technology. This system was tested using two different Sigfox development module which has device ID 4126D0 and 3E3D05. Two locations were selected to observe the connectivity of the Sigfox network. The results showed Sigfox deployment gave impact on a coastal location compared to urban area. Based on this finding, Sigfox is expected to have an improvised performance in the future especially applications in rural and coastal areas.

Experimental Evaluation of End-to-End Delay in a Sigfox Network

This letter presents an experimental evaluation of end-to-end delay in Sigfox networks, considering measurements from the transmitter to the server. We carried out two types of cases. The first was a static experiment with a typical delivery time ranging between 2.5 and 4.5 seconds, with a 100% delivery rate. The second considers mobility, with the experiments carried out in mostly rural environments in which the transmitter is inside a car. In this case, we observed a delivery rate of 20% and an end-to-end delay of up to eight seconds. Our evaluation empirically indicates performance limitations that application developers should consider.

Application of an Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) to Communications in a Hospital Environment

IoT technology is used in various industries, including the manufacturing, energy, finance, education, transportation, smart home, and medical fields. In the medical field, IoT applications can provide high-quality medical services through the efficient management of patients and mobile assets in hospitals. In this paper, we introduce an IoT system to the medical field using Sigfox, a low-power communication network for indoor location monitoring used as a hospital network. A proof-of-concept (PoC) was implemented to evaluate the effectiveness of medical device and patient safety management. Specific requirements should be considered when applying the IoMT system in a hospital environment. In this study, the location and temperature of various targets sending signals to the monitoring system using three different networks (Sigfox, Hospital and Non-Hospital) were collected and compared with true data, the average accuracy of which were 69.2%, 72.5%, and 83.3%, respectively. This paper shows the significance in the application of an IoMT using the Sigfox network in a hospital setting in Korea compared with existing hospital networks.

Prim based link quality and thermal aware adaptive routing protocol for IoMT using SigFox network in WBAN

Prim based link quality and thermal aware adaptive routing protocol for IoMT using SigFox network in WBAN

Cost-effectiveness of installing modules for remote reading of natural gas consumption based on a pilot project

The gas sector in the EU is very developed and advanced, but there are still some steps and measures to improve this sector. One of the measures for the improvement, but also for the collection of data on energy consumption for an easy transition to a low carbon economy, are the projects of installing smart meters. This paper analyses analyzes a pilot project of installing modules for remote reading of natural gas consumption on existing membrane gas meters. In the pilot project observed, modules for remote reading were installed on more than 10,000 existing meters, and their use, activation, and as well as the benefits that are achieved by using them are described in detail. These modules use the increasingly popular Sigfox network, which has proven to be an excellent tool for data transmission with low energy consumption, which can greatly simplify the digitization of many energy sectors. The installation of modules for remote reading on existing meters represents a novelty improvement of classic membrane meters towards modern and increasingly sought-after smart meters, which has proven to be time effective because, unlike some smart meter installation projects, this approach requires a very short installation time. The results of the financial and sensitivity analysis have shown that with the currently valid legal regulation the financial savings achieved by energy supplier due to exemption from paying penalties are more than sufficient to cover the investment and operating costs of the entire investment. In case the legislation changes or is different, this paper proposes the concept of transferring partial financial value of energy savings from end consumers to energy supplier in order to cover the investment and operating costs of implementation. • Technical solution for upgrading classic gas meter to smart meter. • Pilot project of installing 10,200 modules for remote reading. • Financial savings achieved by energy supplier cover the cost of installation. • Concept of transferring financial value of energy savings to energy suppliers.

Learning methods for RSSI-based geolocation: A comparative study

Abstract In this paper, we investigate machine learning approaches addressing the problem of geolocation. First, we review some classical learning methods to build a radio map. These methods are split in two categories, which we refer to as likelihood-based methods and fingerprinting methods. Then, we provide a novel geolocation approach in each of these two categories. The first proposed technique relies on a semi-parametric Nadaraya–Watson (NW) estimator of the likelihood, followed by a maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimator of the object’s position. The second technique consists in learning a proper metric on the dataset, constructed by means of a Gradient boosting regressor: a k-nearest neighbor algorithm is then used to estimate the position. The proposed methods are compared on two data sets originated from Sigfox network, and an indoor dataset performed in a three-story building. Experiments show the interest of the proposed methods, both in terms of location estimation performance, and ability to build radio maps.

Recovery of Incapacitated Commercial Delivery Drones Using LPWAN Technology

This paper proposes for the first time the use of an Internet of Things solution for the accurate recovery of incapacitated commercial and retail delivery drones. Since the use of drones will increase in popularity for a variety of uses, the problem of locating and recovering delivery drones is necessary. Using the emerging LoRaWAN and Sigfox networks (as examples of Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) technology), we investigate the opportunity to locate and recover delivery drones that have crashed either due to technical issues or outside malign intervention. Location and recovery of a test drone using LoRa technology was trialed over three distinct terrains (urban, suburban, and rural) at five different sites in each terrain. These 15 trials evaluate ease of recovery on arrival at the crash site, accuracy of location coordinates given, and a subsequent analysis of the channel statistics for the LoRa network. The experiment was repeated using the Sigfox network as a comparison. The drone was able to be recovered at 14 of the 15 tests sites for both LoRa and Sigfox; in every case the drone's location was successfully transmitted to the secure server via the LPWAN networks. The paper investigates the reported location accuracy from the drone and also uses RMSE as an accuracy metric. The paper furthermore divulges lessons learned and presents a drone recovery algorithm.

Proposal for the Design of Monitoring and Operating Irrigation Networks Based on IoT, Cloud Computing and Free Hardware Technologies.

In recent decades, considerable efforts have been devoted to process automation in agriculture. Regarding irrigation systems, this demand has found several difficulties, including the lack of communication networks and the large distances to electricity supply points. With the recent implementation of LPWAN wireless communication networks (SIGFOX, LoraWan, and NBIoT), and the expanding market of electronic controllers based on free software and hardware (i.e., Arduino, Raspberry, ESP, etc.) with low energy requirements, new perspectives have appeared for the automation of agricultural irrigation networks. This paper presents a low-cost solution for automatic cloud-based irrigation. In this paper, it is proposed the design of a node network based on microcontroller ESP32-Lora and Internet connection through SIGFOX network. The results obtained show the stability and robustness of the designed system.

A Low-Cost IoT-Based System to Monitor the Location of a Whole Herd.

Animal location technologies have evolved considerably in the last 60 years. Nowadays, animal tracking solutions based on global positioning systems (GPS) are commercially available. However, existing devices have several constraints, mostly related to wireless data transmission and financial cost, which make impractical the monitorization of all the animals in a herd. The main objective of this work is to develop a low-cost solution to enable the monitorization of a whole herd. An IoT-based system, which requires some animals of the herd being fitted with GPS collars connected to a Sigfox network and the rest with low-cost Bluetooth tags, has been developed. Its performance has been tested in two commercial farms, raising sheep and beef cattle, through the monitorization of 50 females in each case. Several collar/tag ratios, which define the cost per animal of the solution, have been simulated. Results demonstrate that a low collar/tag ratio enable the monitorization of a whole sheep herd. A larger ratio is needed for beef cows because of their grazing behavior. Nevertheless, the optimal ratio depends on the purpose of location data. Large variability has been observed for the number of hourly and daily messages from collars and tags. The system effectiveness for the monitorization of all the animals in a herd has been certainly proved.

Long Range SigFox Communication Protocol Scalability Analysis Under Large-Scale, High-Density Conditions

In recent years, the IoT concept is more and more powerful, having set the goal of integrating billions of devices to the Internet. Thus, from this perspective, the interest allocated to low-power wireless networks of sensors is higher than ever. In this paper, the SigFox scalability is analyzed from the IoT concept point of view. In the scientific research, there are a series of papers which tackle the SigFox issues, oftentimes at a comparative study level, without evaluating the performance level of the communication protocol. This paper comes to fill this gap by creating a realistic SigFox communication model. Moreover, a developed and tested generator of SigFox traffic has been implemented, using SDRs. This allows the possibility of evaluating the performance level of WSN networks, of a large-scale high-density-type. Both of the suggested instruments represent the novelty of this paper. The obtained results show that the maximum number of sensors that can transmit data at the same time, using the proposed scenarios, is of approximately 100, in order to obtain a high level of performance when the number of available channels is 360. If we are to increase the number of sensors, an avalanche effect ensues which triggers the sharp decrease of the performance of the SigFox network. At the end of this work, a series of solutions are being suggested with the main purpose of increasing the performance level of large-scale, high-density SigFox networks.

A New Bi-Frequency Soil Smart Sensing Moisture and Salinity for Connected Sustainable Agriculture

Optimizing water consumption is a major challenge for more sustainable agriculture with respect for the environment. By combining micro and nanotechnologies with the offered solutions of IoT connection (Sigfox and LoRa), new sensors allow the farmer to be connected to his agricultural production by mastering in real time the right contribution needed in water and fertilizer. The sensor designed in this research allows a double measurement of soil moisture and salinity. In order to minimize the destructuring of the ground to insert the sensor, we have designed a cylindrical sensor, easy to insert, with its electronics inside its body to propose a low power electronic architecture capable of measuring and communicating wireless with a LoRa or Sigfox network or even the farmer’s cell phone. This new smart sensor is then compared to the current leaders in agriculture to validate its performance. Finally, the sensor has better performance than commercials, a better response time, a better precision and it will be cheaper. For the salinity measure, it can detect the level of fertilizer in the soil according to the need of farmers.

Localization in Low Power Wide Area Networks Using Wi-Fi Fingerprints

Supply chain management requires regular updates of the location of assets, which can be enabled by low power wide area networks, such as Sigfox. While it is useful to localize a device simply by its communication signals, this is very difficult to do with Sigfox because of wide area and ultra narrowband nature. On the other hand, installing a satellite localization element on the device greatly increases its power consumption. We investigated using information about nearby Wi-Fi access points as a way to localize the asset over the Sigfox network, so without connecting to those Wi-Fi networks. This paper reports the location error that can be achieved by this type of outdoor localization. By using a combination of two databases, we could localize the device on all 36 test locations with a median location error of 39 m . This shows that the localization accuracy of this method is promising enough to warrant further study, most specifically the minimal power consumption.

An Alternative Wearable Tracking System Based on a Low-Power Wide-Area Network.

This work presents an alternative wearable tracking system based on a low-power wide area network. A complete GPS receiver was integrated with a textile substrate, and the latitude and longitude coordinates were sent to the cloud by means of the SIM-less SIGFOX network. To send the coordinates over SIGFOX protocol, a specific codification algorithm was used and a customized UHF antenna on jeans fabric was designed, simulated and tested. Moreover, to guarantee the compliance to international regulations for human body exposure to electromagnetic radiation, the electromagnetic specific absorption rate of this antenna was analyzed. A specific remote server was developed to decode the latitude and longitude coordinates. Once the coordinates have been decoded, the remote server sends this information to the open source data viewer SENTILO to show the location of the sensor node in a map. The functionality of this system has been demonstrated experimentally. The results guarantee the utility and wearability of the proposed tracking system for the development of sensor nodes and point out that it can be a low cost alternative to other commercial products based on GSM networks.