Technology
Technology

Frequently Asked Questions

  1. How long has Arch Rock been in business?
  2. What is PhyNet™ and what does it mean to have a tiered architecture?
  3. Is Arch Rock a "sensor" company?
  4. What are the benefits of extending the IP protocols natively to the sensor nodes?
  5. What is 6LoWPAN?
  6. How does IPv6 compare to IPv4 and why is it better for WSNs?
  7. Should IPv6 be used for single-hop point-to-point communication?
  8. Isn't IP too big for low-bandwidth, 802.15.4 networks?
  9. What functionality does Arch Rock include over and beyond basic 6LoWPAN?
  10. How does Arch Rock achieve its networking reliability?
  11. Are Arch Rock IP Nodes full function devices?
  12. Do all other architectures enable sensing, mesh routing and application execution on battery-operated nodes?
  13. What are the expected battery lifetimes for your sensor nodes? What are the tradeoffs?
  14. How does Arch Rock achieve long battery life and still remain responsive?
  15. How does Arch Rock achieve low power listening and power-efficient routing on all nodes without requiring rigid time-synchronization?
  16. Does Arch Rock's IP-based products result in less efficiency when compared to other non-IP and proprietary implementations?
  17. What are Web Services and does Arch Rock support them?

1. How long has Arch Rock been in business?

Arch Rock was incorporated in 2005, but the company's founders have been working on wireless sensor networking (WSN) from its beginning in the late 1990s. While at the University of California-Berkeley and Intel Research, Arch Rock's founders did seminal research and development work on WSNs, creating three generations of wireless sensor nodes, the "Berkeley motes", mesh networking protocols, and the leading operating system for sensor networks, TinyOS.

2. What is PhyNet™ and what does it mean to have a tiered architecture?

PhyNet is an Internet Protocol (IP)-based platform that implements a tiered WSN architecture that eliminates the need to co-locate individual sensor networks with the server-based functions that control them. By placing a scalable internetworking tier - the PhyNet Router - between them. Sensor applications can now reside half a world away, across a corporate campus or in the next room, communicating with any number of WSNs across local-area or wide-area IP networks.

3. Is Arch Rock a "sensor" company?

Arch Rock develops and sells products that integrate sensor technology into low-power wireless sensor nodes and networks. Arch Rock nodes embed some sensors internally and also integrate a wide variety of analog or digital sensors through standard connectors.

4. What are the benefits of extending the IP protocols natively to the sensor nodes?

IP-based wireless sensor networks leverage decades of established knowledge in networking management, security, operating models, technology and products. Additionally, IP-based WSNs enable unprecedented opportunities to develop efficient end-to-end applications between wireless sensor nodes operating in low-power IEEE 802.15.4 wireless mesh environments and other IP devices such as laptops, servers, handhelds, Wi-Fi cameras, etc. Lastly, IP-based applications do not have the innovation bottlenecks that would have been otherwise introduced by gateway devices translating between incompatible network technologies, as is the case when the WSN is not IP-based.

5. What is 6LoWPAN?

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) 6LoWPAN standard (also known as RFC 4944) defines how IP communication is conducted over low-power wireless IEEE 802.15.4 personal-area networks; it utilizes IPv6, the latest and most scalable version of the ubiquitous Internet Protocol within the mesh network. The IETF 6LoWPAN working group was formed in 2004 to address the challenge of enabling wireless IPv6 communication over standardized IEEE 802.15.4 low-power radio with particular emphasis on resource efficiency in code size, packet header overhead, power utilization, and memory requirements. In March 2007, Arch Rock introduced the first commercial implementation of 6LoWPAN in its Primer Pack/IP offering and has since expanded the offering with the introduction of PhyNet™, an enterprise-scale wireless sensor network system offering.

6. How does IPv6 compare to IPv4 and why is it better for WSNs?

IPv6 is better suited to wireless sensor networks than IPv4 even though it has larger headers and defines more functionality. The large address space not only supports a huge number of devices, but it also eliminates many of the artificial naming constraints of IPv4. As a result, an adaptation layer in RFC 4944 (6LoWPAN) was defined that carried the meaning of IPv6 addresses in a very compact form using small IEEE 802.15.4 addresses. Additionally, the various Layer 2 bootstrapping and discovery mechanisms were consolidated in ICMPv6, bringing them into the same IPv6 architecture. Lastly, IPv6 defines link-local communication to enable simple, single-hop networks.

7. Should IPv6 be used for single-hop point-to-point communication?

Yes. IPv6 built link-local (single-hop) communication into the core protocol for the purpose of bootstrapping, discovery, and autoconfiguration. Link-local can also be used to communicate over a simple network where all devices are within a single hop.

8. Isn't IP too big for low-bandwidth, 802.15.4 networks?

Absolutely not. Resource conservation is a key consideration in low-power wireless sensor applications. The resources that matter to achieving deployment ubiquity, long-lived power autonomy, and cost effective devices include: low protocol overhead in bandwidth on the radio, low program memory requirements, low data memory requirements, and low power usage through intermittent and often infrequent operation. On all these dimensions, 6LoWPAN achieves resource efficiencies comparable to those of alternate non-IP based architectures, while offering the significant benefits of familiar operating paradigms and end-to-end application enablement with a huge range of IP-based devices, including devices located outside 802.15.4 mesh networks.

9. What functionality does Arch Rock include over and beyond basic 6LoWPAN?

In the networking domain, Arch Rock offers a range of ICMP control and management messages, full UDP and TCP transport-layer protocols, and several applications that run over the standard transport protocols above, including: remote management and data collection from sensor nodes, embedded web services, over-the-air (OTA) programming of sensor nodes, highly reliable, power-efficient and responsive mesh networking that spans all sensor nodes, and network-wide encryption and authentication services on sensor nodes. Furthermore, Arch Rock's embedded software is built on an industrial-class operating system that offers structured programming interfaces for embedded applications and sensor drivers.

10. How does Arch Rock achieve its networking reliability?

Arch Rock routing protocols achieve link-layer reliability by utilizing hop-by-hop acknowledgement in addition to dynamic mesh routing in which all sensor nodes are able to route and forward--even those operating on battery power. Additionally, Arch Rock enables triple redundancy in the data-collection path and offers the freedom of spatial diversity as a result of our battery-operated IP Nodes. Finally, with the introduction of PhyNet™ Router we are able to add redundancy and support for automatic fail-over across multiple PhyNet Routers thus eliminating any single point of failure at the edge of the WSN.

11. Are Arch Rock IP Nodes full function devices?

Arch Rock's sensor nodes are unique in the industry because they can all sense and route while still being battery operated, providing both deployment flexibility and network reliability. Arch Rock IP Nodes also support robust embedded application functionality such as collection, configuration, local computation, OTA programming and remote management.

12. Do all other architectures enable sensing, mesh routing and application execution on battery-operated nodes?

No, Arch Rock's approach is unique. We are the only open-standards based wireless sensor networking company whose battery-powered nodes can sense, route and compute while still being long-lived.

13. What are the expected battery lifetimes for your sensor nodes? What are the tradeoffs?

Arch Rock's low-power algorithms allow lifetimes measured in years. Lifetimes are affected by variables such as operating environment, sensor configuration, sample rate and network efficiency. Of particular note is Arch Rock's ability to achieve very low power consumption (and correspondingly long life), while at the same time ensure extremely reliable and responsive networks that do not involve rigid and centralized scheduling or time synchronization techniques. Arch Rock has developed a detailed power model that we can use to provide you a tailored lifetime estimate for your specific environment.

14. How does Arch Rock achieve long battery life and still remain responsive?

To meet low power-consumption requirements yet achieve highly reliable, efficient and scalable meshed wireless communication, Arch Rock has created breakthrough network protocols on top of the IEEE 802.15.4 radio standard. The company's innovative link-layer protocol implements the concept of "passive vigilance," which allows sensor nodes to "sleep," using minimum energy, while remaining responsive to "wakeup calls" from the network when data need to be collected, alerts generated or packets routed.

15. How does Arch Rock achieve low power listening and power-efficient routing on all nodes without requiring rigid time-synchronization?

Arch Rock's patent-pending low power listening algorithms allow each sensor to be a responsive mesh router while operating on finite sources of local power, such as batteries or small solar panels. These algorithms allow for frequent samples of the radio channels in order to maintain responsiveness, while maintaining the "power budget" associated with these sampling operations.

16. Does Arch Rock's IP-based products result in less efficiency when compared to other non-IP and proprietary implementations?

Absolutely not. Arch Rock technology provides low protocol overhead in bandwidth on the radio, low program memory requirements, low data memory requirements, and low power usage through intermittent and often infrequent operation. We achieve resource efficiencies comparable to those of other non-IP based and proprietary implementations and yet offer the added and significant benefits of familiar operating paradigms and interoperability with the large number of non-802.15.4 IP-based devices.

17. What are Web Services and does Arch Rock support them?

Arch Rock products provide standard web services interfaces that can be easily integrated with any IT system via SOAP or REST and XML. Arch Rock Web Services can be accessed from virtually any programming language, which makes integration into existing applications, or creation of new ones, easier and more efficient.

If you have additional questions, please don't hesitate to send them to info@archrock.com or call us at 415-692-0828.