A Sigfox Module for the Network Simulator 3

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Abstract
In recent years, Sigfox has earned a prominent place in the Low-Power Wide-Area Network arena, attracting the attention of industry, academia, and standards development organizations. As sensors and actuators used in the Sigfox devices aim to be operated for a long time with no maintenance, Sigfox’s low energy consumption characteristics are part of its appeal to real-world applications. Prior to the work described in this paper, Network Simulator 3 had no support for the Sigfox protocol, and this paper presents a module to simulate the Sigfox protocol. The module is parametric with respect to the energy consumed by devices in different states, and we present simulation results obtained by calibrating the model using measurements obtained from a real Sigfox hardware module. Moreover, this work models a battery that is affected by self-discharge current. By means of this ns-3 module, it is possible to simulate a scenario prior to its deployment, thus helping with planning the deployment itself. To showcase the benefits of our work, we designed a behavioral model of devices using different communication strategies, and we present results on how long a device lasts and how much data delivery costs for different strategies. We plan to contribute the module to the ns-3 App Store.
Funding Information
  • InnoFund, Denmark (Distributed ONline monitoring of the Urban waTer cycle (DoNUT))
  • Villum Fonden (S4OS)
  • European Research Council (LASSO)