French companies space IoT connectivity provider Kinéis and industrial-grade LPWAN firm Actility are making life easier for users by merging IoT data in a single platform, whether it comes from space or Earth.

Users can now receive IoT data seamlessy aggregated from Kinéis or any LoRaWan operator through ThingPark, Actility’s IoT platform.

Kinéis operates eight in-orbit satellites and offers low data rate, low consumption, direct to satellite, two-way connectivity to 20.000 active terminals. The small Kinéis chipset and the low consumption technology allow the making of miniaturised devices with long lasting autonomy.

Thousands of devices provide data to the international scientists community through the Argos services provided by CLS (Collecte Localisation Satellites), helping them better understand the planet: ocean parameters, climate and wildlife study, even some birds have been tracked for years across continents by a few grams device.

Kinéis aims to open these historical applications to current IoT use cases, using LoRaWan connectivity and the possibility of going hybrid, offered by Actility.

LoRaWan is a wireless protocol that allows battery-operated devices to communicate with IoT applications via long-range, wireless connections. It eliminates wiring, is easy to deploy and does not need any licences. It can reduce the energy consumption of connected objects while giving them years of autonomy by exchanging small data at low speed.

Data collected from assets using both Kinéis and LoRa connectivity are delivered on the same format to business applications and cloud connectors. In logistics, transports, agriculture or energy management applications, it lets users choose the best connectivity option depending on the use case to transmit data seamlessly on the visualisation and management tool. Therefore, Kinéis and LoRaWan connectivity are complementary.

Actility is providing its capability to interconnect any LPWAN technology to LoRaWan infrastructure with the help of the ThingPark RAN connector. Kinéis and Actility’s networks are interconnected through ThingPark Exchange, a global LoRaWan peering hub, going through accelerated growth and already connecting 20 LoRaWans worldwide.

This partnership provides a ready-to-use platform to manage hybrid connectivity and all the required integration to application platforms. The data can then flow into many of the major cloud IoT platforms connected to Actility’s ThingPark including Microsoft Azure, AWS IoT Core, IBM Watson, Google Cloud IoT and PTC Thingworx.

By getting integrated with the ThingPark Exhange ecosystem, Kinéis makes the satellite network coverage available to any terrestrial LoRaWan provider, public or private.

“We talk about a hybrid connectivity, LoRaWan and Kinéis data gathered by Actility for a seamless use, this is what Actility and Kinéis have achieved together,” said Rémi Ferrier, Kinéis chief product officer. “Space IoT connectivity is the perfect ally of LPWANs, it completes coverage where terrestrial networks are not available, which represents about 85% of the planet, and brings an answer to the roaming question. We will launch a constellation of 25 nano-satellites in 2023 to upgrade the service of the eight satellites available today, fully upward compatible with the thousands of devices connected today, including hybrid devices and data delivering to IoT platforms or cloud connectors.”

Alper Yegin, vice president at Actility, added: “We are very excited to have interconnected Kinéis’ satellite network into ThingPark LoRaWan infrastructure via the ThingPark RAN connector, making it available for the ever-growing set of terrestrial networks around the world via ThingPark Exchange. We believe massive IoT can only be achieved through successful integration of multiple technologies by industry collaboration. We are very happy to have achieved a good example of this together with our partner Kinéis.”

Created in 2018, Kinéis is a satellite operator and global connectivity provider. It inherited 40 years of expertise in the Argos system, founded by the CNES French space agency and historically operated by CLS to develop technology that provides easy access to useful satellite data.

To make life easier for professionals and individuals and encourage them to use its products and services, Kinéis locates and connects objects wherever they are on the planet. To that end, it harnesses all its technological innovation capabilities to forge links between new space and IoT.