About IQRF

OPEN IQRF COMMUNICATION STANDARD FOR WIRELESS MESH NETWORKS

The IQRF has focused on reliable message delivery as the primary value. With 250+ routing hops and reliable message delivery, the IQRF excels nowadays, especially in street lighting applications, where the long-range should be achieved, and high reliability must be guaranteed.

After two decades on the market, the IQRF gets standardized, allowing everyone to use and implement all technical achievements and reliable protocols protected by dozens of patents under one royalty-free license.

iqrf timeline

The IQRF is the best wireless mesh technology for you if the following matters:

✔ Industrial reliability. Thanks to the IQMESH® protocol, more network nodes mean higher reliability. It is deterministic and reliable even in difficult environments. It delivers robustness and industrial reliability to the wireless IoT.

✔ Ultimate security. The complex approach from device association to a network to automatically encrypted communication is based on security standards.

✔ Simple integration. Modular architecture, lightweight yet efficient DPA protocol, hardware and software development tools, plenty of guides, examples, and tutorials along with excellent technical support make development easy.

✔ IQRF True Low Power®. Battery self-life is the limit. Not the wireless consumption. 
The IQRF defines new limits, far beyond the existing ones.
For example, a sensor transmitting data every minute can run for more than 20 years on a single AA battery. Twice the actual battery life.

✔ Interoperability and huge ecosystem. The interoperability of devices from different manufacturers is based on IQRF Interoperability standards. For example, the sensor standard defines the format of more than 40 quantities including their transmission.

IQRF networks are organized and orchestrated. The coordinator is such a conductor for other network devices called nodes. Nodes with routing capability are called routers. The network communication is always encrypted and authenticated according to the latest security standards.

The association is the process controlled by the coordinator and used to establish membership in a network for joining nodes. The coordinator shares bonding data with nodes in a secure way through the encrypted payload.  The IQRF MAC address is a unique identifier of IQRF devices, used for authentication. The coordinator securely shares bonding information, such as communication keys and network setup, and also dedicates a unique network address to each node. The network address is used for addressing.

The discovery is the process by which the coordinator discovers routing nodes' topology and dedicates them the Virtual Routing Number, a unique number reflecting distance from the coordinator in hops and defining a time slot during routing. Each router knows its position in the network and has its dedicated time slot. TDMA-based directional flooding guarantees deterministic and collision-free routing.

The IQMESH® routing protocol ensures that routing works well also in extensive networks. No vectors or tables are stored on routers or delivered in frames. The IQMESH® routing protocol is collision-free, based on the TDMA and directional flooding, supporting unicast, broadcast, and selective cast. It is deterministic and reliable. The IQMESH® protocol is reliable even under challenging environments.

FRC® protocol (Fast Response Commands) is a protocol based on the IQRF® network arrangement and IQMESH® routing, enabling fast data aggregation and acknowledged broadcasts/multicasts. FRC® protocol further increases IQMESH® protocol reliability and enables effective data aggregation and network management in general WMNs.

IQMESH® + FRC® =  great solution for Lossy, Low Rate WMNs.

The Security Services layer is responsible for ensuring the following security objectives:

  • Frame integrity
  • Networking frame authenticity 
  • Footer and Payload confidentiality
  • Replay protection

Wireless consumption pushes battery limits to the new boundaries defined only by the battery's self-life.