Video: What Is Weightless?

Weightless, launched in 2011, is the world’s first and only Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communication standard designed to work in white space spectrum. It simultaneously overcomes all of the barriers holding back widespread deployment of M2M.

M2M applications are very different to voice and high bandwidth use cases like Internet browsing. According to Weightless Special Interest Group (SIG), trying to realise this enormous opportunity using legacy wireless technology standards like GSM isn’t possible, since neither 3G, nor any other cellular based network, is optimised to support M2M.

This is why Cambridge start-up Neul has been working to develop a new network, something cheap, secure and requiring very little power.

Weightlessness

Last week, Neul showed the public the first ever Weightless chip, codenamed ‘Iceni‘. The tiny piece of silicon has a range of over 10 kilometers, can work from a single battery for over 10 years, and is capable of  tuning across the entire UHF TV spectrum (470 – 790MHz), so it can use portions of spectrum which are not engaged in a particular location, due to the pattern of TV broadcast transmitters.

In the video below, Weightless SIG explains why we need the new standard and the Iceni chip.

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