What is Amazon Sidewalk?
Amazon Sidewalk is a secure community network that uses Amazon Sidewalk Bridges, such as compatible Amazon Echo and Ring devices, to provide cloud connectivity for IoT devices. Amazon Sidewalk enables low-bandwidth and long-range connectivity at home and beyond using Bluetooth LE for short-distance communication and LoRa and FSK radio protocols at 900MHz frequencies to cover longer distances.
When Amazon Sidewalk is enabled, this network can support other Sidewalk end devices in your community, and can be used for applications such as sensing your environment. Amazon Sidewalk helps your devices get and stay connected.
Features of Amazon Sidewalk
The following are features of Amazon Sidewalk.
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Amazon Sidewalk creates a low-bandwidth network using Sidewalk gateways that include Ring and select Echo devices. Using gateways, you can share a portion of your internet bandwidth, which is then used to connect your end devices to the network.
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Amazon Sidewalk offers a secure networking mechanism with multiple layers of encryption and security.
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Amazon Sidewalk offers a simple mechanism to enable or disable participation in Sidewalk.
Amazon Sidewalk concepts
The following are some key concepts of Amazon Sidewalk.
- Sidewalk gateways
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Sidewalk gateways, or Amazon Sidewalk bridges, route data between your Sidewalk end devices and the cloud. Gateways are Amazon devices, such as the Echo device or the Ring Floodlight Cam, that support SubG-CSS (asynchronous, LDR), SubG-FSK (synchronous, HDR), or Bluetooth LE for Sidewalk communication. Sidewalk gateways share a portion of your internet bandwidth with the Sidewalk community to provide connectivity to a group of Sidewalk-enabled devices.
- Sidewalk end devices
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Sidewalk end devices roam on Amazon Sidewalk by connecting to Sidewalk gateways. The end devices are low-bandwidth, low-power smart products, such as Sidewalk-enabled lights or door locks.
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Certain Sidewalk gateways can also act as end devices.
- Sidewalk Network Server
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The Sidewalk Network Server, operated by Amazon, verifies the incoming packets and routes uplink and downlink messages to the desired destination, while keeping the Sidewalk network time-synchronized.
Learn more about Amazon Sidewalk
For more information about Amazon Sidewalk, see the following web pages:
