PowerG Wireless Communication

PowerG Overview

What Is PowerG?

PowerG is a wireless communication technology optimized for security alarms, home automation, and commercial building automation. It’s the most advanced wireless communication technology available for security alarm sensors and automation devices, leading across the board in security, reliability, and performance. PowerG is used in Qolsys and DSC security systems.

How Is PowerG Different?

PowerG stands out in the following ways:

  • Reliable: Robust against interference
  • Long-Range: Incredibly long-range communication
  • Energy Efficient: Longer battery life
  • Low-Latency: Near-immediate sensor signaling
  • Bi-Directional: Devices can receive as well as send
  • Jamming Resistant: Avoids jamming attacks
  • Secure: State-of-the-art encryption

Why Does PowerG Matter?

Because choosing a security system that uses PowerG can save you time and money while providing a more secure and reliable home security and automation system.

Where Is PowerG Used?

PowerG is used in security alarm sensors and home automation devices such as door locks and light switches. You can get PowerG devices at the Surety Store.

PowerG Benefits

Robustness & Reliability

PowerG sensors and devices just work. Reliably. You don’t have to worry about:

  • Delays from collisions with other sensors
  • Interference from other alarm systems or wireless systems
  • Jamming attempts from an attacker with an RF jammer

Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum (FHSS) and Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) help make PowerG almost as reliable as wired communication without the hassle of running wires.

Incredibly Long Range

PowerG sensors and devices can work a long way from the control panel. A very long way.

Traditional security alarm sensors, and even modern Honeywell SiX sensors, only work reliably a few hundred feet away from the control panel. PowerG sensors and devices with a clear line of sight can work at 6,000 feet away from the control panel.

With PowerG, you typically don’t need to worry about:

  • Sensor distance in large homes or commercial buildings
  • Sensors communicating through walls or furniture*
  • Sensors or devices in detached garages, sheds, or gates
  • Repeaters, you won’t need repeaters

*If the communication path is completely blocked by metal then even PowerG will still have problems. But this doesn’t occur much in practice.

Long Battery Life

Battery-powered PowerG sensors and devices last longer. Typically, security alarm sensors need to have their batteries replaced every 3 to 5 years. PowerG sensors often exceed 8 years before needing to be replaced.

Thanks to TDMA, ATP, and antenna diversity (see below), PowerG sensors last nearly twice as long as traditional sensors before needing a battery change.

Time & Money

PowerG sensors can save you a lot of time. And time is money. They cost a little more than traditional security alarm sensors but the additional cost can turn into significant savings when it saves you hours and hours of time.

Consider the following scenarios

  • You spend several hours over the weekend trying to get a few sensors working all the way across the house and end up having to buy a repeater, wait 3 days for it to arrive then spend another few hours setting that up.
  • Your neighbor has a system that transmits on the same frequency as your traditional sensors. Every few days you get a trouble signal from your alarm system because of interference. Sometimes your alarm signals fail to even reach the control panel.
  • You want to add a sensor or automation device to your detached garage but traditional wireless or Z-Wave just won’t reach. You end up having to run wires to the garage.
  • You spend a few hours every 4 years changing all your sensor batteries, instead of every 8 years. It costs you twice as much for batteries and twice as much of your time.

If you use the IQ Panel 4, which supports both PowerG and traditional 319.5 MHz sensors, a reasonable middle ground is to pick 319.5 MHz S-Line sensors for locations that aren’t as critical and are close to your control panel. Then use PowerG for devices that are critical or located further away. But even then, the traditional sensors may end up costing you more over time replacing batteries.

Except in rare circumstances, PowerG just works, really well. It saves you time, and therefore money, in the long run.

How PowerG Works

PowerG utilizes advanced wireless communication features that aren’t found in other security alarm and automation wireless technologies.

Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum

Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum (FHSS) derives from military radio technology where it was designed to be secure and reliable under adverse battle conditions.

Traditional wireless sensors only communicate on one frequency. If your sensor is trying to send an alarm signal and another system happens to be transmitting on that frequency at the same time then it will interfere and prevent your sensors from getting the alarm signal to the control panel.

PowerG sensors in North America communicate on 50 separate frequencies. When they’re transmitting, they constantly switch between these frequencies very quickly, 64 times per second! Choosing which frequency will be used next is random. The next frequency used is only known by the sensor and the control panel. Outsiders can’t guess which frequency will be used next.

  • 433-434 MHz: 8 hopping frequencies
  • 868-869 MHz: 4 hopping frequencies
  • 912-918 MHz: 50 hopping frequencies (North America)

FHSS helps PowerG systems overcome interference from both the environment (other systems using the same frequency) and attackers (people intentionally trying to interfere with your alarm system). If there is interference on a channel that PowerG is trying to use, it will simply move on to the next frequency in the random sequence and keep on communicating.

Time Division Multiple Access

Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) is a way to allow multiple devices to communicate on the same channel at (effectively) the same time without interfering with each other. TDMA is used in cellular phone technology so that multiple people can make calls at the same time on the same frequency.

Traditional wireless sensors suffer from collisions. A collision occurs when two sensors try to transmit at the same time. If a collision occurs then neither transmission will get through to the control panel. The sensor might wait a while and retry sending the alarm signal but waiting causes delay, and it still might result in another collision.

TDMA divides up the communication channel into time slots. A device will only transmit during its own time slot, preventing collisions from occurring in the first place. By avoiding collisions, PowerG sensors reliably send alarm signals without delay (with low-latency) so that alarm signals get to the control panel immediately, which is important for security and life-safety systems.

In addition to reliable communication without delay, TDMA also helps PowerG sensors save battery life compared to other two-way wireless communication technologies.

  1. By avoiding collisions, power isn’t wasted transmitting when the control panel wouldn’t receive the signal anyway due to a collision.
  2. Instead of having to listen for communications from the control panel all the time, sensors and other battery-powered devices only need to listen during the control panel’s time slot (the downlink). They can “sleep” the rest of the time, conserving energy and extending battery life.

Adaptive Transmission Power

The most energy demanding activity a wireless communication device has to do is transmit. If it can transmit with less power then its battery will last longer. PowerG devices use Adaptive Transmission Power (ATP) to minimize the power used transmitting.

Traditional wireless sensors transmit with the same amount of power every time they send a signal. If the sensor is far away from the control panel then it might be necessary but if it’s close to the control panel, like most sensors are, then a lot of that transmission power is wasted.

PowerG sensors and devices exploit the fact that they communicate both ways (they both transmit and receive) to optimize the amount of transmission power used to communicate with the control panel. The sensor starts out transmitting loudly, with a lot of power. The control panel measures how well it received the communication and sends feedback to the sensor telling it how much power was needed to reliably communicate. Using that information, the sensor only transmits with the minimum power needed in future communications.

Advanced Antenna Diversity

Antenna technology has come a long way since traditional wireless sensors were designed. PowerG uses advanced antenna diversity technology that’s specifically optimized to squeeze the most transmission range out of the FHSS & TDMA communication protocols it’s employing, using the least amount of transmission power.

AES Encryption

AES was chosen by NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) as the Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) for encryption, also known as FIPS197. The National Security Agency (NSA) stated that AES is secure enough to protect its information at the secret and top-secret levels.

Traditional wireless sensors often don’t use encryption. The ones that do tend to use lower-grade encryption technology that is easier to break. No encryption, or weak encryption, leaves the security system vulnerable to hacking attacks. These usually come in the form of “spoofing” or “replay” attacks where the attacker records a sensor transmission and then replays the transmission later, impersonating your sensor. The attacker can trick your control panel into thinking a sensor is working when it’s not. Or it can send fake false alarm signals, motivating you to bypass the sensor or turn off the system.

PowerG uses 128-bit AES encryption for all communications. It’s practically impossible for an attacker to hack your PowerG security system. PowerG is used for home automation as well as security sensors and the same encryption applies to those devices, which is especially important for security devices such as door locks.

Conclusion

PowerG is the most advanced wireless communication technology for security alarms and performs better than both home security and home automation alternatives in terms of reliability, range, battery life and security. PowerG sensors cost a little more up front than traditional security alarm sensors but they work better and tend to save you money in the long run.

Get PowerG sensors and home automation devices at the Surety Store.

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