Selection Guide

A RIIM solution has many technical advanced features. However for a given use case normally one or two features are the key factors.Trying to use all the features simulataniously might not give an end results as expected. Therefore there are a couple of questions that needs to be considered for the specific use case and the answer will guide the final solution.

Q&A

  • What’s the range between nodes?

    • This question is related to using high power modules (27 dBm) or low power modules.

  • How long distance the wireless nodes can handle depend on background noise and environment between nodes.

    • As a guideline for network planning, low power modules shall be able to handle 30 meters indoor through several walls and 500 meter open area outdoor. For a use case with more challenging links, the high-power modules should be considered.

  • What region are you operating?

    • RIIM currently support 868 MHz and 915 MHz. Depending on where in the world the network is operating the local regulation might allow one or two of these bands.

    • See Frequency and output power for a list of areas and bands

  • How’s the solution connected to the internet (if at all connected)?

    • Self-contained network, no connection to internet/cloud

    • Router connection to the internet

    • Edge gateway connection to the internet

    • The difference between router connection and edge gateway is that a router forwards the packets on IP level without caring about the content, while an edge gateway includes intelligence and edge computing.

  • Also, the use case must define if the physical connection is based on ethernet, Wi-Fi, 4G or other.
  • How many nodes in one network?

    • RIIM can support up to 1000 nodes in one network. However, the throughput per device will be lowered and the extension up to 1000 must be evaluated vs other network performance.

  • What does the data traffic pattern look like?

    • In a wireless mesh the traffic pattern is important to understand.

      • Is the data mostly from sensor to a cloud or to a gateway

      • Is there communication between nodes in the network

      • In some use cases a node shall only send data to nearby nodes. This is solved in RIIM with one-hop multicast.

      • Is there downlink data from the gateway/cloud to any device

    • Based on a traffic analyses the network operator must consider the following:

      • What’s network traffic for the border router and mesh routers close to border router.

      • Too many packets to/from one device could lead to network congestion. Typical 3 packets per second is a safe limit. Increasing above this must be done with care and if the network is optimized for low power consumption the limit will be lower.

      • For high traffic devices the TSCH with AFA is important to fulfill EU radio regulations

  • Are devices in the network battery operated?
    • 3 options needs to be considered:

      • All nodes have power (for example in smart street lighting or smart metering for electricity meters)

      • Some nodes are mains operated devices in combination with battery operated nodes.

      • All nodes in the network are battery operated.

    • For the first option any variant of the RIIM can be used.

    • The second option is best solved with single channel operation, which include sleeping leaf nodes with down to 4.7 uA current consumption.

    • For the last use case a battery operated mesh(sleepy mesh) based on TSCH is required. For the two first use cases a single channel option is best.

  • Latency requirements

    • What are the packet latency requirements?

  • What’s the timing requirement and the wireless data?

    • If the data upward toward border router is important then a single channel system is best

    • If the data downward from border router to mains powered nodes are time critical then a single channel system is the best solution

    • If the data downward from border router to battery operated nodes are time critical, then TSCH is the best solution.

  • Network topology

    • Network topology will also have an impact on how the network preforms. A long and narrow network will have many hops and behave differently than a shallow and wide network. Network congestion analysis will be different for different topologies

  • Time synchronous events

    • Do the use cases required that node behave in a synchronous matter? That’s that they do action on the same time or is there a requirement that nodes never act in the same moment. All this can be controlled with the time-synchronized events of RIIM. Time synchronized events requires TSCH

Options for network connection

Router

Gateway

IPv4

IPv6

IPv4

IPv6

Ethernet

NAT64
SLIP to external
GW with Ethernet,
4G, or WiFi
NAT64 + LAN
connected to GW
SLIP to external
GW with Ethernet,
4G, or WiFi

4G
NAT64 + LAN to
4G Router

SLIP to GW

WiFi
NAT64 + LAN
connection to
WiFi access
point