Sigfox LPWA network rolls out in Japan

Article By : EE Times Asia

Kyocera has deployed an IoT service based on a Sigfox LPWA network in Tokyo, Kawasaki City, Yokohama City and Osaka City, and plans to take it nationwide by 2020.

Kyocera Communications Systems has deployed a low-cost Internet of Things (IoT) network service based on the Sigfox IoT network in four cities in Japan.

The Sigfox LPWA network is now available in Tokyo, Kawasaki City, Yokohama City and Osaka City, to be further planned for Japan’s 36 major cities by early 2018 and nationwide by 2020.

Figure 1: Kyocera's LPWA network service. (Source: Kyocera)

The Sigfox network will target several IoT services and applications in Japan, including remote meter reading and water leakage detection; remote monitoring for vending machine repair and restocking; monitoring for temperature, precipitation, wind and river levels; container, pallet and chassis location information management; tracking and tracing rental equipment in case of loss or theft; mHealth applications such as data collection and monitoring, as well as monitoring of the elderly, children and pets; and monitoring of greenhouse temperature and humidity, soil condition monitoring and machinery management.

Kyocera has partnered with Optex to enable coin-operated parking spaces in Tokyo that uses smart vehicle detection sensors connected by Sigfox. Each parking space has Optex's vehicle detection sensor, “ViiK,” to directly notify the cloud server of its usage and vacancy, according to the company.

Kyocera has also teamed up with Ai-Cynap for a temperature monitoring case study of home delivery pizza chain operated by Strawberry Cones, in which the temperature of refrigeration and freezer facilities and working space are monitored. Temperature data, such as pizza dough, is sent to the cloud every 15 minutes and monitored with a special application, according to Kyocera.