/ Weightless™
Carrier-grade private
Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN)
Weightless™ is a proven, high-performance LPWAN connectivity technology for the Internet of Things (IoT). It uses a narrow band modulation scheme, offering fully acknowledged bidirectional communications, to enable unrivaled Quality of Service (QoS) and add-on functionalities.
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Weightless™ offers the promised performance, network reliability and security characteristics of 3GPP carrier grade solutions, while being otherwise comparable to other LPWAN technologies.
Features
Bidirectional
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Supports both network-originated and
device-originated traffic -
Paging capability
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Low latency in both uplink and downlink
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Fast network acquisition
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Forward Error Correction (FEC)
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Automatic Retransmission Request (ARQ)
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Adaptive Channel Coding (ACC)
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Handover
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Roaming
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Cell re-selection
Long range
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Wide area coverage with one of the industry
leading link budgets -
Lower data rates with channel coding provide similar link budget to other LPWAN technologies
-
>2km in crowded urban environment
-
Suitable for both public and private networks
Reliable
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Fully acknowledged communications
-
Auto-retransmission
upon failure -
Frequency and
time synchronization -
Supports narrowband channels (12.5kHz) with frequency hopping for robustness to multi-path and narrowband interference
-
Channel coding
-
Supports licensed
spectrum operation
Capacity & scalability
-
FDMA+TDMA in 12.5kHz narrowband channels offer optimal capacity for uplink-dominated traffic from a very large number of devices with moderate payload sizes
-
Operates over the whole range of license-exempt sub-GHz ISM/SRD bands for global deployment: 169/433/470/780/868/915/
923MHz -
Flexible channel assignment for frequency re-use in large-scale deployments
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Adaptive data rate from 625bps to 100kbps to optimize radio resource usage depending on device link quality
-
Transmit power control for both downlink and uplink to reduce interference and maximize network capacity
-
Time-synchronized base stations for efficient radio resource scheduling
and utilization
Robust coding scheme
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Forward error correction (FEC) or channel coding used for controlling errors in data transmission over unreliable or noisy communication channels.
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Convolutional coding
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Acknowledgment and retransmission
Secure
-
Authentication to
the network -
AES-128/256 encryption
-
Radio resource management and scheduling across the overall network to ensure quality-of-service to
all devices -
Support for over-the-air firmware upgrade and security key negotiation
or replacement -
Fast network acquisition and frequency/
time synchronization
-
PSK/GMSK modulation for optimal power amplifier efficiency
-
Interference-immune offset-QPSK modulation using spread spectrum for improved link quality in busy radio environments
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Transmit power up to 14dBm to allow operation from coin cell batteries
-
Adaptive transmit power and data rate to maximize battery life
-
<4uA sleep mode
Open standard
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Brings the reliability and performance of cellular technologies at a fraction of the cost by avoiding any legacy or backward compatibility concerns
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Ensures interoperability between the manufacturers
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Provides multivendor support to stimulate ongoing innovation and minimize end-user costs
-
Royalty-free IP minimizes production costs
System Architecture
Weightless™ network uses star topology and is composed of end-device communication modules and base stations. Crews of end-device communication modules connected to one base station for full bidirectional communication through Weightless™ protocol, which also manages device authorization and radio resource allocation. Ubiik offers base stations for both indoor and outdoor environments to meet customer needs. Base stations connect to backend system through backhaul network (Ethernet or 4G) for data processing and applications.
LPWAN
Technologies Comparison
With FDMA and TDMA techniques, Weightless™ can be configured to use lower bandwidth with higher efficiency for large scale network deployment.
It also supports full bidirectional communication and FOTA for the applications, such as industrial IoT and utility applications. Unlike NB-IoT or LTE-M technologies, Weightless™ supports any sub-GHz licensed/unlicensed bands
to be flexible for either public or private networks.
Why choose Weightless™
/ Narrowband 100kHz (8 x 12.5kHz sub-channels)
/ Large scale network with frequent uplink transmissions
/ Firmware Over-The-Air (FOTA) update
/ High-reliability requirements
