Ingenu’s RPMA® (Random Phase Multiple Access) meets or exceeds the data features that the industry has come to expect from cellular providers. LPWA endpoints may not require voice and video data rates, but they do require certain inalienable rights.
RPMA DELIVERS ON THE MACHINE BILL OF RIGHTS:
- Industry best security guarantees including strong authentication
- Reliable delivery on all data
- Full two-way data flow
- Flexible frame sizes
- Reliable, flexible, acknowledged delivery
- Broadcast channel for firmware downloads and other functions
When you connect to the IoT using RPMA, you get more than a simple data link. RPMA gives you a connectivity experience that allows you to use your devices to their fullest potential.
Industry Best. Security.
RPMA security is end-to-end and equal to or better than cellular-grade security in all dimensions. Our utility customers drove RPMA development with demanding requirements on end-to-end security including numerous exhaustive security audits. If our technology did not meet the federally mandated standards, our customers would be fined millions of dollars a day. Our public network customers are benefitting from that rigor.
One aspect in particular where other existing LPWA networks are falling short is in the area of authentication. Authentication entails sending a digital signature that only the valid originator of that data can provide. Imagine an attack where false data is injected into a variety of applications. Devices connected to a network that fails to support authentication are better off remaining unconnected rather than creating such an operational risk.
Reliable. Uplink + Downlink Delivery.
Reliable delivery is something we realized was critical from the very start. We saw that if a data transaction could not be acknowledged, then that transaction wasn’t particularly useful. We were surprised to see approaches like Sigfox technology and LoRa use unreliable delivery mechanisms on the majority of their data. Blindly sending data three times or so and hoping one of these got through is not only poor for reliability, but bad for battery life, and worse for capacity. We were especially shocked to see that even the cellular LPWA efforts are modeling their assumptions based on only 50% of data transactions requiring acknowledgement. By contrast, RPMA acknowledges every single data transaction.
Flexibility is very important. Whether its frames of different sizes, sent at regular periods, or totally irregular combination of uplink and downlink – RPMA supports it. Everything is allowed. All other LPWA solutions put constraints on this. We believe the fixed, unreliably sent, almost exclusively uplink 12-byte packet a few times a day is not the answer.
The RPMA Broadcast Channel.
Background Upgrades.
Twenty-plus years is a long time to commit to a particular factory-installed firmware image. Every single RPMA customer required the ability to download firmware over the air. How do you send 100 kByte to 1 MByte images to a tremendous number of endpoints without compromising the operation of the system? The solution: broadcast the firmware image to all impacted devices simultaneously.
RPMA FIRMWARE
DOWNLOAD CAPABILITY:
- Performs strong authentication of the firmware image
- Is extremely power consumption efficient
- Is robust to packet loss by strong erasure tolerant forward error correction and repetition
OTHER USES OF A BROADCAST
CHANNEL INCLUDE:
- Rapidly sending simultaneous commands to a large number of streetlights (e.g. turn on, turn off)
- Simultaneously turning off hundreds of thousands of pool-pumps and hot-water heaters by utility during periods of peak demand.
No other approach has the ability to do this broadcast operation, including cellular LPWA.
