Nivis

Last updated
Nivis
Type private
Industryspecialized semiconductors
Founded1998
Headquarters
Atlanta, Georgia
,
United States
Key people
Doug Johns, CEO
Products Wireless sensor network devices
OwnerLupton Group / Lyndhurst Foundation
Number of employees
Approximately 50 (2012)
Website www.nivis.com

Nivis, LLC is a company that designs and manufactures wireless sensor networks for smart grid and industrial process automation. Target applications include process monitoring, environmental monitoring, power management, security, and the internet of things. [1] The company is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, with additional offices in Romania, where much of its technology is developed. The company's product portfolio consists of standards-based wireless communications systems, including radio nodes, routers, management software and a software stack for native communications. [2] Nivis hardware is operated by open source software. [3]

Contents

Company history

Nivis was founded in 1998 and purchased in 1999 by the Lupton Group / Lyndhurst Foundation, a Chattanooga, Tennessee based foundation formed by Cartter Lupton who was the son of John Thomas Lupton.

Nivis deployed its first product, a 900MHz proprietary mesh network for environmental monitoring, in 2002. This system consisted of gateways connected in a mesh network communicating over satellite/GPRS with a Network Operations Center in Atlanta, Georgia.

Between 2003 and 2006, Nivis deployed 900 MHz Frequency-Hopping Spread Spectrum (FHSS) proprietary mesh technology with partner in Automatic Meter Reading (AMR).

In 2008, Nivis moved to standards-based technology. The company deployed Direct-Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS), 802.15.4 2.4 GHz mesh technology, with partner for an intelligent street light controller. That year, Nivis launched an evaluation kit based on the ISA100.11a standard. [4] [5] Shortly after, Cisco and Nivis demonstrated a 6LoWPAN sensor network [6] and in October the company signed a joint development agreement with Freescale.

In 2009, Nivis launched an ISA100.11a development kit consisting of gateway and end devices, and an ISA 100.11a Wireless Demonstration Project In Operation. [7] In 2010 the Nivis ISA100.11a stack was successfully tested for compliance by the Wireless Compliance Institute (WCI). [8]

In 2011, Nivis launched the WirelessHART development kit. later that year the company was awarded Nivis awarded the FIPS-197 Security Certification for Industrial Wireless Solutions utilizing Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) 128 for encryption. Subsequently, Nivis launched a smart objects networking platform, using 6LoWPAN, 802.15.4g and 802.15.4e, at IPSO Alliance press conference in Santa Clara, CA. [9]

In 2012, Nivis was the only company that supports both the ISA100.11a and WirelessHART standards with a single device; by 2015 the company had several competitors in this field. [10]

Technology

Nivis has specialized in wireless mesh network research and technology, in which no device or connection can be a single point of failure. The technology has several advantages: it uses an architecture which supports a variety of network topologies, allowing the user to choose one appropriate for a specific environments. At start up, devices automatically organize themselves into a multi-hop, layered network, and the nodes organize themselves in layers and form redundant routing paths. If a node fails, the remaining nodes automatically re-route traffic around that node. Each node makes routing decisions locally, so that the network can dynamically adapt to changes in the network by adopting new routes. [11]

The decentralized, wireless networks scale easily and at low cost, and the radio nodes typically communicate on unlicensed frequency bands (for example 2.4 GHz), in a time-slotted network that is able to coexist with other wireless networks that may or may not be based on the same standard.

Nivis supports the Advanced Encryption Standard adopted by the U.S. government and worldwide, as well as FIPS-197 certification, 802.15.4 security level, ISA100.11a MAC and Transport layer security, WirelessHART MAC and Transport layer security, and follow the IPsec standard for securing end-to-end IP communications.

Related Research Articles

IEEE 802.15 is a working group of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) IEEE 802 standards committee which specifies Wireless Specialty Networks (WSN) standards. The working group was formerly known as Working Group for Wireless Personal Area Networks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Personal area network</span> Short distance computer network

A personal area network (PAN) is a computer network for interconnecting electronic devices within an individual person's workspace. A PAN provides data transmission among devices such as computers, smartphones, tablets and personal digital assistants. PANs can be used for communication among the personal devices themselves, or for connecting to a higher level network and the Internet where one master device takes up the role as gateway.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wireless network</span> Computer network not fully connected by cables

A wireless network is a computer network that uses wireless data connections between network nodes. Wireless networking allows homes, telecommunications networks and business installations to avoid the costly process of introducing cables into a building, or as a connection between various equipment locations. Admin telecommunications networks are generally implemented and administered using radio communication. This implementation takes place at the physical level (layer) of the OSI model network structure.

Zigbee is an IEEE 802.15.4-based specification for a suite of high-level communication protocols used to create personal area networks with small, low-power digital radios, such as for home automation, medical device data collection, and other low-power low-bandwidth needs, designed for small scale projects which need wireless connection. Hence, Zigbee is a low-power, low data rate, and close proximity wireless ad hoc network.

IEEE 802.15.4 is a technical standard which defines the operation of a low-rate wireless personal area network (LR-WPAN). It specifies the physical layer and media access control for LR-WPANs, and is maintained by the IEEE 802.15 working group, which defined the standard in 2003. It is the basis for the Zigbee, ISA100.11a, WirelessHART, MiWi, 6LoWPAN, Thread, Matter and SNAP specifications, each of which further extends the standard by developing the upper layers which are not defined in IEEE 802.15.4. In particular, 6LoWPAN defines a binding for the IPv6 version of the Internet Protocol (IP) over WPANs, and is itself used by upper layers like Thread.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wireless mesh network</span> Radio nodes organized in a mesh topology

A wireless mesh network (WMN) is a communications network made up of radio nodes organized in a mesh topology. It can also be a form of wireless ad hoc network.

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) refer to networks of spatially dispersed and dedicated sensors that monitor and record the physical conditions of the environment and forward the collected data to a central location. WSNs can measure environmental conditions such as temperature, sound, pollution levels, humidity and wind.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Z-Wave</span> Wireless standard for intelligent building networks

Z-Wave is a wireless communications protocol used primarily for residential and commercial building automation. It is a mesh network using low-energy radio waves to communicate from device to device, allowing for wireless control of smart home devices, such as smart lights, security systems, thermostats, sensors, smart door locks, and garage door openers. The Z-Wave brand and technology are owned by Silicon Labs. Over 300 companies involved in this technology are gathered within the Z-Wave Alliance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Home network</span> Type of computer network

A home network or home area network (HAN) is a type of computer network that facilitates communication among devices within the close vicinity of a home. Devices capable of participating in this network, for example, smart devices such as network printers and handheld mobile computers, often gain enhanced emergent capabilities through their ability to interact. These additional capabilities can be used to increase the quality of life inside the home in a variety of ways, such as automation of repetitive tasks, increased personal productivity, enhanced home security, and easier access to entertainment.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Computer network</span> Network that allows computers to share resources and communicate with each other

A computer network is a set of computers sharing resources located on or provided by network nodes. Computers use common communication protocols over digital interconnections to communicate with each other. These interconnections are made up of telecommunication network technologies based on physically wired, optical, and wireless radio-frequency methods that may be arranged in a variety of network topologies.

6LoWPAN was a working group of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). It was created with the intention of applying the Internet Protocol (IP) even to the smallest devices, enabling low-power devices with limited processing capabilities to participate in the Internet of Things.

A wireless ad hoc network (WANET) or mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is a decentralized type of wireless network. The network is ad hoc because it does not rely on a pre-existing infrastructure, such as routers or wireless access points. Instead, each node participates in routing by forwarding data for other nodes. The determination of which nodes forward data is made dynamically on the basis of network connectivity and the routing algorithm in use.

A wide variety of different wireless data technologies exist, some in direct competition with one another, others designed for specific applications. Wireless technologies can be evaluated by a variety of different metrics of which some are described in this entry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Daintree Networks</span> Building automation company

Daintree Networks, Inc. was a building automation company that provided wireless control systems for commercial and industrial buildings. Founded in 2003, Daintree was headquartered in Los Altos, California, with an R&D lab in Melbourne, Australia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">OCARI</span>

OCARI is a low-rate wireless personal area networks (LR-WPAN) communication protocol that derives from the IEEE 802.15.4 standard. It was developed by the following consortium during the OCARI project that is funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR):

IEEE 802.11s is a wireless local area network (WLAN) standard and an IEEE 802.11 amendment for mesh networking, defining how wireless devices can interconnect to create a wireless LAN mesh network, which may be used for relatively fixed topologies and wireless ad hoc networks. The IEEE 802.11s task group drew upon volunteers from university and industry to provide specifications and possible design solutions for wireless mesh networking. As a standard, the document was iterated and revised many times prior to finalization.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Geoff Mulligan</span> American computer scientist

Geoff Mulligan is an American computer scientist who developed embedded internet technology and 6LoWPAN. He was chairman of the LoRa Alliance from its creation in 2015 until 2018, was previously founder and chairman of the IPSO Alliance, is a consultant on the Internet of Things, and in 2013, was appointed a Presidential Innovation Fellow.

DECT Ultra Low Energy is a wireless communication standard used to design wireless sensor and actuator networks for smart home applications. DECT ULE originated from the DECT and NG-DECT (Cat-iq) technology. DECT ULE devices are used in home automation, home security, and climate control.

Thread is an IPv6-based, low-power mesh networking technology for Internet of things (IoT) products. The Thread protocol specification is available at no cost; however, this requires agreement and continued adherence to an End-User License Agreement (EULA), which states that "Membership in Thread Group is necessary to implement, practice, and ship Thread technology and Thread Group specifications."

Static Context Header Compression(SCHC) is a standard compression and fragmentation mechanism defined in the IPv6 over LPWAN working group at the IETF. It offers compression and fragmentation of IPv6/UDP/CoAP packets to allow their transmission over the Low-Power Wide-Area Networks (LPWAN).

References

  1. ↑ "Internet of Things: Nivis platform for networking smart objects (like meters)". metering.com
  2. ↑ "Business Week: Nivis, LLC: Private Company Information". Business Week. Archived from the original on November 15, 2009. Retrieved May 10, 2012.
  3. ↑ "More IoT Standards Some Are New, Some Are Not". Electronic Engineering Journal, February 9, 2015, by Bryon Moyer
  4. ↑ "Nivis releases ISA100.11a compatibility kit-- before standard exists..." ControlGlobal.com. June 13, 2008. Retrieved June 2, 2012.
  5. ↑ Driss Benhaddou; Ala Al-Fuqaha (18 March 2015). Wireless Sensor and Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks: Vehicular and Space Applications. Springer. pp. 92–. ISBN   978-1-4939-2468-4.
  6. ↑ Cox, John (July 27, 2008). "Cisco, Nivis demo 6LoWPAN sensor network". John Cox on Wireless. Network World. Retrieved May 10, 2012.
  7. ↑ Welander, Peter (October 7, 2009). "Control Engineering: ISA 100.11a Wireless Demonstration Project In Operation". Control Engineering. Retrieved June 2, 2012.
  8. ↑ "ISA100.11a-certified Devices Announced". AutomationWorld. September 2, 2010. Retrieved May 10, 2012.
  9. ↑ "Nivis Unveils New Networking Platform". Smart Meters. October 19, 2011. Retrieved June 2, 2012.
  10. ↑ "ISA100 Wireless comes of age at Achema 2015". isa.org. By Andre Ristaino
  11. ↑ Gaurina-Medjimurec, Nediljka (30 November 2014). Handbook of Research on Advancements in Environmental Engineering. IGI Global. pp. 98–. ISBN   978-1-4666-7337-3.
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