Sigfox‘s 0G network has been successfully used in the rescue of a 90-year-old person who went missing in Basque Country, northern Spain. After 24 hours without news from him, a patrol that included the Basque Rescue Dog Group, firefighters and local police officers exhaustively searched the areas where he could be found, without preliminary results.
Thankfully the missing man was carrying an Invoxia device, which is a GPS tracker that had been purchased by his family to facilitate his location in cases like this. The device allows the wearer to be geolocated with great precision by means of a function for defining ‘safety zones’. When the wearer of the tracker enters or leaves these zones, alerts are sent to the cellphone connected to the device. Thus, an attempt was made to locate the person, but the device stopped emitting a GPS signal as it was in a remote area with abundant vegetation.
0G: the dedicated network for the IoT that has facilitated the rescue
The authorities contacted Sigfox, the Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity provider and the creator and operator of the 0G network to which the device was connected, to join the search. By triangulating the device’s signal and several communication antennas, they were able to provide a very approximate location of the person, who was in a very closed streambed with symptoms of hypothermia, but fortunately with stable vital signs.
Sigfox’s 0G network offers an alternative means of communication between devices without the need for them to be tied to the coverage and availability of the conventional mobile network, sending and receiving data without the need for SIM cards, internet connection or WiFi.
The base stations simply transmit radio messages with a universal protocol, while the associated devices simply need a small silicon chip. In this way, a long-range network is achieved, even in remote rural or other areas where other traditional connectivity alternatives are unable to reach. Rebecca Crowe, managing director of Sigfox Spain, points out that “we are delighted to have been able to help reunite this person with his family. In cases like this, every second counts.”
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