Weightless was a set of low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) wireless technology specifications for exchanging data between a base station and many of machines around it.
It provides encryption and implicit authentication using a shared secret key regime to encode transmitted information via a 128-bit AES algorithm.
Each base station queries a central database to determine which network the terminal is registered to decode and route data accordingly.
Weightless-P, with bi-directional, narrowband technology intended to be operated in licensed and unlicensed ISM frequencies, was then just called "Weightless.
The base station accesses a database to identify the frequencies or channels that it can use without interfering with terrestrial television broadcasts in its local area.
[5] The original Weightless specification was developed for machine-to-machine, low-cost, low-power communication system for use in the white space between TV channels in 2011 by engineers working at Neul in Cambridge, UK.
[6] The Weightless-W specification is based on time-division duplex technology with spread spectrum frequency hopping in an attempt to minimise the impact of interference and with variable spreading factors in an attempt to increase range (at the expense of lower data rate) and to accommodate low power devices with low data rates.
For networks using Weightless-W technology, a base station queries a database which identifies the channels that are being used for terrestrial television broadcast in its local area.
A range of modulation and encoding techniques are used to permit each base station to communicate at a variety of speeds with terminals, some of which may be nearby and others several km away.
Data rates may vary depending on the distance and the presence of radio interference – the typical range is alleged to be between about 0.1 Mbit/s and 16 Mbit/s.