OpenWeightless
OpenWeightless C.I.C.[1] a Community Interest Company was formed as a limited by shares not-for-profit company in the United Kingdom in March 2018 by Michael Green with the objective of making Weightless low power wide area network (LPWAN) radio protocols accessible to the Internet of Things (IoT) and Industrial IoT (IIoT) developer communities worldwide.
Objectives
The first objective of the company was to initiate an open source development project on GitHub for the core functionality of the Weightless protocol stack plus the gateway and terminal hardware necessary to run the protocol in development and proof of concept (PoC) environments.
From the outset OpenWeightless source code was licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which did not include rights to intellectual property on which the Weightless protocols are based. However, the Weightless SIG (Special Interest Group) grants such rights to developers when their products pass Weightless certification tests and thereafter while membership to the SIG is maintained.
Business Model
OpenWeightless C.I.C. was incorporated on 1st September 2018 to address the needs of wireless and device developers for a non-proprietary radio protocol.
In order to ensure OpenWeightless C.I.C. was a sustainable business, the Board of Directors applied for the OpenWeightless trademark (TM) to enable the organisation to offer supporting services including proprietary licenses, certifications and indemnities on request to developers and organisations branching the OpenWeightless source code for derivative works.
Trade Marks
OpenWeightless[2] is a UK Trademark used by OpenWeightless C.I.C.
Coding Standards
OpenWeightless wireless software was developed to high integrity embedded code.
Following the research of Michele Selvatici, Luca Dariz and Massimiliano Ruggeri on functional safety presented at the 2017 IEEE International Conference on Industrial Technology (ICIT) titled "SWSN: A safe wireless sensor network module for fail-silent systems"[3] and the preceding year's work presented at the 2016 IEEE Conference titled: "A safety approach to wireless sensor network modules"[4].
The early goal of OpenWeightless to achieve Safety Integrity Level (SIL) certification IEC 61508, was revised as a result of these publications toward compliance with the ISO 25119 certification.
This goal also led the project toward favouring code contributors able to use Model Driven Design (MDD), Formal Verification (FV) and Functional Programming (FP) to generate code for embedded devices
Alternatives to OpenWeightless-P
OpenWeightless is a radio protocol implementation that conforms to the Weightless Open Standard. However, OpenWeightless was not the first implementation of a Weightless radio protocol. A proprietary implementation was already available from Ubiik in Taiwan. Other implementations of Weightless were expected to follow.
Prior to Weightless, two earlier projects existed: the first in 2011 was a venture by Neul Limited to develop the Weightless-W (in TV whitespace). This was followed by NWave Limited developing Weightless-N (narrow band). Both these projects helped prove the protocol was viable but failed to complete. A short summary of the Weightless protocols and history has been published by LinkLabs
Several other protocols are targeted at the license exempt Industrial, Scientific and Medical (ISM) frequency bands including:
| Protocol | Distinctions |
|---|---|
| IP500 | targets safety and security relevant building management system applications |
| Lemonbeat Radio | currently targets buildings & surrounding areas on 868MHz |
| LoRaWAN | an ISM band implementation with a growing community as well as growing choice of radio modules |
| OpenWeightless | the first open source implementation of the Weightless-P Standard |
| Ingenu RPMA | operates in the 2.4 GHz frequency band, which are range limited compared to Sub-1GHz band protocols |
| Sigfox | Ultra Narrow band implementation |
| Ubiik Weightless | this is the first proprietary implementation of the Weightless-P protocol |
| Weightless | this is an LPWAN radio protocol Standard |
How do Weightless, OpenWeightless and Ubiik Weightless compare to other SRD/ISM protocols?
A comparison made by Ubiik in 2017 suggests there are significant differences between IoT & IIoT radio protocols, not just in the technologies but also in their application affinity and licensing models.
Radio protocols that use licence exempt frequency bands allow users to run their own 'private' network, such as with Wi-Fi, however these frequency bands are made available on the understanding that interference may occur. This is an attractive proposition so long as the cost of the base station is relatively inexpensive compared to the subscription charges that a mobile / cellular service might charge.
By contrast mobile network operators use licensed radio frequency bands which are assigned to the operator. In this scenario users connect on a 'subscriber' basis and pay the operator for their connection. Fees are typically based on a combination of a standing charge, to 'connect' to their network plus time and bandwidth charges.
In 2017, for 'Private' Low Power Long Range Networks (LPWAN) in Sub-1GHz frequencies Ubiik concluded Weightless and LoRaWAN were the main protocol choice.
References
This article "OpenWeightless" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:OpenWeightless. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.
- ↑ "OPENWEIGHTLESS C.I.C. - Overview (free company information from Companies House)". beta.companieshouse.gov.uk. Retrieved 2018-09-12.
- ↑ "OpenWeightless TM UK00003279796". Gov.UK Intellectual Property Office. 2017-12-31. Retrieved 2018-03-12.
- ↑ "A safe wireless sensor network module for fail-silent systems". IEEE. 2017-05-04. Retrieved 2018-03-12.
- ↑ "A safety approach to wireless sensor network modules". IEEE. 2016-11-17. Retrieved 2018-03-12.
