Abstract: In order to meet the needs of more and more remote Internet of Things devices, LPWA came into being.

This article is shared from the Common Internet of Things communication Technology LPWA communication Technology, huawei Cloud community, by the cat who loves bread.

If you follow the Internet of Things, you may have heard the term LPWA. Even if I haven’t seen them, I have seen them on the technology media, such as LoRa, SigFox and NB-iot.

In order to meet the needs of more and more remote iot devices, LPWA came into being. LowPower Wide Area Network (LPWAN) is designed for low bandwidth, LowPower consumption, long distance, and large number of connected Internet of things applications. Now let’s go into today’s topic and introduce LPWA technology comprehensively.

1, SigFox

SigFox is a French Internet of Things technology startup. Its company is called SigFox, and its technology is also called SigFox. The SigFox technology is designed for low-throughput projects. It has a low transmission power consumption of 50-100 microwatts, but still maintains a relatively stable data connection. But that’s because iot devices generate a lot of data, and SigFox stores it itself. SigFox, however, is a small company with insufficient credibility to keep the data and questions about information security, so its use is not as widespread as LoRa’s.

2, LoRa

LongRange is short for LongRange, which unlike SigFox is maintained by the LoRa Alliance. The LoRa technology was developed by Semtech, and then through the combined efforts of the LoRa Consortium, they developed a network for the LPWA domain called LoRaWAN. It is an ultra-long range wireless transmission scheme based on spread spectrum technology to meet the requirements of long distance and low power consumption, which is mainly supported in unlicensed frequency bands. Lora can be used in automated meter reading, smart home and building automation, wireless warning and security systems, industrial monitoring and control, and remote irrigation systems, to name a few.

3, NB – IoT

Nb-iot was first proposed by Huawei and Vodafone, and later joined by some companies such as Ericsson and Qualcomm. Its characteristic is that NB-iot is called narrowband cellular Internet of Things, so it is built on existing cellular networks. At the same time, because it is narrowband, so it only consumes about 180KHz bandwidth, can be directly deployed on GSM network, UMTS network or LTE network, to reduce the deployment cost, to achieve smooth upgrade.

4, eMTC

The last LPWA technology to be described is Ericsson’s SOLUTION eMTC based on 4G network, which is mainly oriented to the application scenarios of deep coverage and large connection. Compared with NB-iot, it has a higher speed but a smaller coverage area and a higher power consumption. However, although it has a smaller coverage and greater power consumption than NB-iot, it is capable of voice communication. In contrast to NB-iot, it can be used in scenarios where voice communication is required.

5. Comparison of LPWA technology

The following article also makes a simple comparison of the above LPWA technologies, except for NB-iot and eMTC, the other two networks are running on the SubG unlicensed frequency band. SubG means frequency below 1GHz, and mainly refers to the band between 27MHz and 960MHz. SubG is ideal for long distance, low power communication. Under the same power, the higher the frequency of the network, the worse the penetration ability. However, in the LPWA scenario, devices such as electricity meters and water meters are often placed in a relatively deep position, and there are usually a lot of obstacles on them, so it is necessary to choose the low frequency band. In the table, it can also be seen that in the description of NB-iot, its frequency band is mainly deployed above the SubG authorized frequency band, because some NB-iot networks are deployed outside the SubG authorized frequency band. The specific reasons will be explained in the later sections of this article. LoRa, which is used in unlicensed bands, and NB-iot, which is used in licensed bands, are both popular LPWA technologies, so they are often compared. The difference between the two is:

  1. LoRa was developed by US self-employed Semtech, and NB-iot is a standard developed by 3GPP’s official Mobile Communications Association. Semtech is responsible for the upstream and downstream industry chain of LoRa, but NB-iot is a joint operation of upstream and downstream companies in the entire communication industry. For example, Huawei, Qualcomm, Samsung, Mediatech and other companies are doing the NB-iot chip module.

  2. The frequency bands used by NB-iot are licensed, while LoRa is not. The authorized frequency band is the frequency band granted by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. In addition to the authorized operators, all other individual enterprises and institutions can not use it. It is illegal to use it, and the radio management department will check the water meter at home. And the non-authorized frequency band is the frequency band that anyone can use without the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology saying who can use it. Therefore, if a person or business uses LoRa’s working band for something else, it can cause serious interference with LoRa devices in that area, making the network unusable. Therefore, the quality of nB-iot network with official background is definitely better and higher quality.

  3. The nB-iot operators have already established the LoRa network and do not operate the LoRa network. If an enterprise wants to use LoRa, it needs to buy a complete set of network operation hardware and software, such as base stations, network equipment, and servers, build the network, and operate the LoRa network by itself.

At present, the three major operators of NB-iot have completed the construction of base stations and network opening in China. Just like using mobile phone SIM cards, enterprises only need to buy NB-iot SIM cards from the operators, and then insert them into the equipment with NB-iot modules, and then they can pay for the use.

  1. What are the advantages of LoRa? In fact, for 90% of businesses, LoRa has no advantage. Unless enterprises want to use the IoT in rural areas, remote mountainous areas, independent factory areas, etc. (such as smart farms, smart factories), there is no operator NB-iot network coverage, so they have no choice but to build LoRa. In addition, very large enterprises, or the government, afraid of using the operator’s network is not safe, such as data theft, so they would rather build their own network maintenance, rather than trust the operator. These are the big differences between NB-iot and LoRa.

6. Wireless communication technology comparison

There are a lot of different network communication technologies in these three types of wireless communication technologies, and all of them can be used in the Internet of Things. How do you choose and how do you weigh them? Figure 4-6 is a good answer to this question, and you can know what kind of network should be used in specific situations through this diagram. The two axes of this graph are transmission rate and transmission distance, which also correspond to the needs of different scenarios of the Internet of Things. According to different data rate requirements, the scenarios can be roughly divided into three categories: first, those with the highest data rate requirements, such as video surveillance and Internet of vehicles; second, those with high data rate requirements, such as intelligent logistics and vehicle management; third, those with low data rate requirements, such as meter reading. And, of course, these scenarios can be subdivided if you look at the distance, so you can sort of break them down into six different networks for different needs. As mentioned above, the most appropriate network is the best network. In addition to the transmission distance and transmission rate, it is also necessary to consider the cost, so as to select the most appropriate network to be used in the solution, so as to obtain the greatest benefits.

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