Typical RIPlink applications

RIPlink perfectly answers the increasing demand from machine-to-machine (M2M) and automotive industries for gateways interconnecting a variety of local devices while offering remote access through a wide area network, in particular for:

RIPlink is particularly well suited to low power RF networks, as such end-nodes are usually resource constrained and IP transport is not defined nor suited. It can be standard or proprietary low power RF such as:

 

But RIPlink also applies to wired connectivity, such as

 

On IP side, a RIPlink Gateway can connect to any IP network such as GPRS, Ethernet or WiFi.
 

 

To demonstrate RIPlink efficiency and simplicity, Wavecom has developed a simple home alarm application using RIPlink, ZigBee and GPRS technologies.
The demonstration involves ZigBee sensors, a GPRS-ZigBee gateway built on Wavecom Fastrack Supreme product, a back-end server, and standard laptop and handset equipment.
The application is using an event management client-server light protocol developed by Wavecom, named M2M Service Agent (M2M-SA), and running on top of TCP/IP, thus also on top of RIPlink.
The application (the M2M-SA Client) running on each simple ZigBee sensors, report the sensor state change (the events) to a small light server (the M2M-SA Server) embedded into the Wavecom Gateway. The M2M-SA protocol is transported over ZigBee thanks to RIPlink, without any change or adaptation compared to its transport over regular IP network, GPRS for example. The same M2M-SA protocol is used to report event changes to the M2M-SA Server running in the back-end. Any device (laptop, mobile, etc.) on the IP network can be informed immediately of sensors state changes.

 

 

RIPlink also serves the increasing demand in smart metering for interconnecting a variety of devices (data loggers, meters, home displays, domestic appliances, etc.) to an information system, by offering IP end-to-end.
A typical implementation of RIPlink is depicted below for a multi-energy smart metering infrastructure. GPRS cellular network access is used by concentrators, home gateways or meters to connect to the information system through IP. This IP network is then extended over Power Line Communication (PLC), or over low power RF technologies (ZigBee or any proprietary technology) to electricity meters, water and gas meters, but also domestic appliances. With RIPlink, the same IP application can run on all meters for data collection, whatever the retained architecture. As RIPlink is not exclusive, a standard ZigBee application can also be deployed when preferred.
 

 

In industrial automation, IPnxt answers to the need for interconnecting a variety of sensors, actuators and machines with PLCs and Information Systems, on different physical networks, but still offering IP end-to-end as a unique abstraction layer.

A typical implementation of IPnxt is depicted below. The IP network access proposed here is GPRS cellular network (but could be any other IP network). This IP connectivity is then extended over RS485, Power Line and Low Power Wireless RF to the devices. Modbus can be used of course on RS485, but also in its TCP version over wireless network without any specific adaptation, using IPnxt.