Sigfox
| SIGFOX SA | |
|---|---|
| legal form | Société Anonyme |
| founding | 2009 |
| Seat | Paris , France |
| management |
|
| Number of employees | 375 (as of 04/2017) |
| sales | 50 million euros (2017) |
| Branch | telecommunications |
| Website | www.sigfox.com/ |
Sigfox (its own spelling SIGFOX) is a French telecommunications company that is building its own global wireless network to wirelessly connect objects with low energy requirements to the Internet. These include, for example, electricity meters , smartwatches , heaters and washing machines, but also applications in agriculture, medical technology and the manufacturing industry. The devices send small amounts of data or messages to a base station at fixed intervals, which then forwards them to a database of the respective recipient. The technology thus provides a basis for the Internet of Things (IoT) .
The Sigfox radio module for a terminal device should cost one US dollar for at least 50,000 modules , and the connection of the device to the Sigfox network another US dollar per year.
The enterprise
Sigfox was founded in 2009 by Ludovic Le Moan (CEO) and Christophe Fourtet (CTO) and describes itself as the first and only company to offer global wireless connectivity for the Internet of Things (IoT). The infrastructure used is completely independent of existing networks, for example cellular networks . Sigfox operates as an independent network operator in Germany, France, Spain and the United States of America . In other countries, the company works with partners. A total of 29 countries are currently (partially) covered. The goal of Sigfox is to build a global, uniform network structure via its own network, with the networked object and its data at the center. Sigfox himself sees “billions of objects and thousands of new use cases” in this segment.
Locations
Sigfox is headquartered in Paris and the technical center is in Labège , a suburb of Toulouse in southwestern France. Sigfox employs more than 420 people there (11/2018). The company has offices in Grasbrunn near Munich, Madrid , San Francisco and Paris . In 2015, Sigfox announced that as part of the partnership with Samsung, a joint research and development center would be opened in Paris.
financing
In a 2015 report, the French government identified the IoT sector as the most important area for startups in the country and that "Sigfox is one of the biggest names in the country in this area". A funding round in February 2015 has been dubbed “the largest French funding round ever”. In November 2016, Sigfox closed another financing round with around 150 million euros. Investors include well-known companies such as Air Liquide , Total and Salesforce Ventures . In addition, Sigfox is considering an IPO in 2021.
market
According to Machina Research, an M2M advisory group, a total of 27 billion M2M connections or 80 billion objects connected to the Internet will be a reality in 2024. Of these, 14% are so-called LPWA connections such as those from Sigfox and its competitors such as LoRa and NB-IoT. The M2M segment of the IoT market (around 40% of the data) will increase to 1.6 to 1.7 trillion US dollars by 2020, according to two estimates .
technology
Many of the devices that will be connected to the Internet of Things in the future only require a small bandwidth, as they only have to transfer small amounts of data. The conventional mobile radio systems are therefore too complex, too expensive and have too high a power consumption for many of these applications. At present, these are primarily the technologies used by telecommunications providers such as 4G , which are able to transmit extremely large amounts of data with the appropriate power supply.
The company's Sigfox network and technology, by contrast, focuses on connecting many low-cost, long-lasting devices that require wide area coverage. Sigfox uses a radio system based on Ultra Narrow Band technology for this purpose. This technology was already used for submarine communication during the First World War. It is known as a low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) . LPWAN uses a long-distance signal in the SRD band (868 megahertz in Europe, 902 megahertz in the USA), which can also penetrate massive objects. Distances of 30 to 50 km can be bridged in open terrain, in cities between 3 and 10 km. In Germany, Sigfox network coverage reached around 60 percent in March 2018; Network coverage is expected to be around 85% by the end of 2018. The long-term goal is global network coverage, whereby the density of the required base stations is correspondingly low due to the high range. For example, coverage of France should be possible with 1,200 base stations. This number is also given for Germany.
In contrast to cellular base stations, Sigfox base stations can manage up to a million objects, whereby a thousandth of the energy of standard cellular radio systems is required. According to Sigfox devices, they can work for up to 20 years with just two AA batteries because they only “become active when they send a message and then go straight back to sleep”. Devices in the Sigfox network use low data rates for this. You can send a maximum of twelve bytes per message and no more than 140 messages per device and day. This means enough capacity to carry simple messages. With twelve bytes, for example, a number between 1 and 7.9 · 10 28 (79 quadrillion) can be represented, which in turn is transmitted as control codes for applications such as tracking or geotargeting .
Partner company
Sigfox does not manufacture the required hardware itself. This is manufactured by partner companies such as Silicon Labs , Texas Instruments , Atmel , STMicroelectronics , NXP and ON Semiconductor . The semiconductors and modules from these companies are in turn built into individual devices from different manufacturers.
Application examples
For example, a publicly accessible defibrillator can be monitored with Sigfox technology . Information on the technical integrity, the battery status and information on a successful use are transmitted. Measured values in agricultural areas, such as the nutrient values of the soil or the water balance of a container, can also be recorded.
Further possible application examples are:
- Car theft protection
- Geotracking of logistics goods
- Sensory monitoring of parking space occupancy
- Level monitoring, e.g. B. with water tanks
- Flow measurement
- Temperature sensors, e.g. B. for monitoring cold chains
- Easy patient monitoring
- Irrigation control
- Monitoring of fire alarms
Web links
- The company's website (English)
- Hunting the Sigfox - Wireless IoT Network Security (Lecture from 35c3 , detailed analysis of Sigfox's IT security, English)
- Deutsche Post DHL Group, Alps Electric Europe GmbH and Sigfox launch innovative tracking solution for roll container location
Individual evidence
- ↑ sigfox.com , Retrieved August 29, 2018.
- ↑ a b coinspeaker.com
- ↑ a b cnet.com (English) Retrieved January 15, 2017.
- ↑ a b humanoides.fr (French) Retrieved January 11, 2017.
- ↑ venturebeat.com (English) Retrieved January 10, 2017.
- ^ Startup With Century-Old Technology Plots IPO, New Funding Round. bloomberg.com (English) Retrieved August 1, 2018.
- ↑ machinaresearch.com (English) Retrieved January 10, 2017.
- ↑ French Wireless Startup Sigfox Seeks $ 200 million in funding. bloomberg.com
- ↑ a b c d cnet.com (English) Retrieved January 15, 2017.
- ↑ a b c elektroniknet.de , accessed on January 10, 2017.
- ↑ IoT provider Sigfox increases network coverage in Germany to 80 percent . In: Telematics Market . ( telematik-markt.de [accessed on May 17, 2018]).
- ↑ wiwo.de , accessed on January 15, 2017.