Native name SIGFOX Area served Global Website Official website Founded 2009 Number of employees 190 | Industry Wireless services Services IoT Revenue 5 million EUR (2015) Headquarters Labège Type of business Société Anonyme | |
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Key people Ludovic le Moan, CEO; Anne Lauvergeon, Chairman; Christophe Fourtet, Scientific Director CEO Ludovic Le Moan (Dec 2010–) Founders Christophe Fourtet, Ludovic Le Moan Profiles | ||
Sigfox gives life to the physical world
Sigfox (styled SIGFOX) is a French company founded in 2009 that builds wireless networks to connect low-energy objects such as electricity meters, smartwatches, and washing machines, which need to be continuously on and emitting small amounts of data.
Contents
Sigfox is based in Labège near Toulouse, France, and has over 80 employees. The firm also has offices in Madrid, San Francisco and Paris.
Introduction to sigfox basics
Technology
Sigfox employs a proprietary technology that enables communication using the Industrial, Scientific and Medical ISM radio band which uses 868MHz in Europe and 902MHz in the US. It utilizes a wide-reaching signal that passes freely through solid objects, called "ultra narrowband" and requires little energy, being termed "Low-power Wide-area network (LPWAN)". The network is based on one-hop star topology and requires a mobile operator to carry the generated traffic. The signal can also be used to easily cover large areas and to reach underground objects.
Sigfox has partnered with a number of firms in the LPWAN industry such as Texas Instruments, Silicon Labs and Axom. The ISM radio band support bidrectional communication. The existing standard for Sigfox communications supports up to 140 uplink messages a day, each of which can carry a payload of 12 Bytes (Excluding message header and transmission information) and up to 4 downlink messages per day, each of which can carry a payload of 8 Bytes.