Sigfox coverage estimator
Enter latitude and longitude with sufficient digits to have good acccuracy of the simulation. We recommend to enter at least 3 decimal places, but 4 or more is better. The simulation is done for that location with a radius of 200 meters. When you enter only 2 decimal places, the result may not be accurate (or even wrong) for some areas. For example, in the Ardennes, sigfox coverage can change rapidly due to hills or valleys
| Interpretation of the colors | |
|---|---|
| Green | good signal, no loss of datapackets expected under normal circumstances |
| Yellow | moderate signal strength, depending on the weather conditions, a (very) limited number of data packets could get lost |
| Orange | limited signal strength, depending on the weather some to many data packets can be lost |
| Red | very limited signal strength or no reception at all for this base station |
Interpretation of the simulated numbers
- Use the numbers in the column with the colored background to have an idea how the sigfox coverage will be for a weather station placed at 1.5m height at sufficient distance from buildings and trees.
- The 3 numbers represent the margin you have on the signal received by the 3 best Sigfox base stations. The order of the colors green-yellow-orange-red gives you an indication of the signal quality at the base station. The higher the number, the more margin you have (more margin = stronger signal = better reception)
- To avoid missing any data packets, make sure the first number is shown in green.
- If the 2nd number is also shown in green, it means that the redundant station also has very good reception (also no data loss expected). Redundant stations are nice to have when the primary base station fails reception for some reason (technical failure, maintenance, etc...)
- Red color: bad or no reception for that base station. If the number in the left column is different from zero, reception will be very limited and interruptions in the datastream are very likely.
- Simulations are done for normal circumstances. But - for example - heavy rain will lower signal strength, and so do temperature inversions at low height (hundreds of meters) when the barrier is between the transmitter (= weather station) and receiver (base stations). Such atmospheric conditions can lower signal strength significantly by as much as 6 to 10 dB. This is one of the reasons applying a "20dB margin" compared to the calculated level by Sigfox
- Important: this is a simulation and no guarantee!
Some examples:
- green-green-green: the best you can have, no problems expected, even if one or two stations fail, there's backup of a 3rd station
- green-yellow-red: in normal circumstances very good reception, but in case the green base stations fails, the backup station is still OK, but we cannot guarantee reception of all data
- yellow-yellow-red: most of the time we are not expecting issues. If the primary base station is missing a data packet, chances are high the 2nd base station will have received it; in general we can say: the lower the margin you have on the 1st base station (yellow color instead of green), the more you have to rely on the 2nd and 3rd station to fill the gaps when reception is not OK at the 1st base station.