Sigfox is a proprietary low power wide area (LPWA) RF-based wireless transmission technology. It uses the unlicensed sub-gigahertz spectrum (868 megahertz in Europe and 915-megahertz in the United States) and is introduced by Sigfox, a network operator in France. It transmits in an ‘ultra narrow-band” where all signals are clustered around a particular frequency.
As an LPWA connection, Sigfox is a natural fit for connectivity in machine-to-machine(M2M)/the Internet-of-Things for the following reasons – (1) most nodes require minimal bandwidth as they will be transmitting very little data; (2) most nodes, scattered in hard to reach areas will run on batteries and the transmission technology must therefore not be power intensive; and (3) the coverage area for an M2M/IoT service is typically very large and service providers will require an cost-efficient technology that transmits over a wider area to reduce the number of nodes deployed.