Vendors race for IoT network coverage

ByRick Merritt, EEtimes, Dec. 01, 2015 – 

In September the former On Ramp Networks changed its name to Ingenu and shifted its strategy from building private networks to creating public IoT nets. The company currently manages 38 private networks around the world using its proprietary 2.4 GHz Random Phase Multiple Access technology based on its own ASICs and developed by founders including former Qualcomm engineers.

In November, Ingenu announced its will have public nets deployed in 30 U.S. cities by the end of 2016. Ultimately, it aims to deploy about 600 towers to cover 70% of the U.S., something itclaims would require 11,000 towers for LoRa and 43,000 for rival Sigfox. It promises uplinks at 41 KBytes/second and downlinks at 20KB/s compared to LoRa and Sigfox which he claims are still running unidirectional nets with uplink rates offering a fraction of the throughput.

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The Weightless Special Interest Group says it is the only contender that aims to keep all aspects of its technology open and royalty free. It is currently based on chips from NWave, an existing provider that maintains its own proprietary network technology just starting to get traction in pilot projects.

The latest entrant is startup Helium Inc. which snagged $16 million in venture capital to create an end-to-end offering announced in October.

It puts its own media-access controller on a 802.15.4 PHY to create a net that dynamically switches between 900 MHz and 2.4 GHz bands as needed. Rather than use mesh networking it pumps up radio power and sensitivity to boost its reach.

Initially, Helium will sell its systems and service directly to companies who need to manage large refrigerators. Ultimately it will sell through integrators to all IoT customers.

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