What is LPWAN and LPWAN Technologies in the market

 

 What is LPWAN and LPWAN Technologies in the market?

The Internet of Things market is growing and so are the technologies supporting it. We can see many wireless Protocols and technologies i.e short Range and Long Range are available in the market and having fierce competitions among them. We know short range technologies(e.g, Zigbee) can collect the data from wireless sensors within short range but for Long Range sensor data collection, we need a technologies which can collect the sensor data and sent it to the Gateway or the coordinator which is located at the far away place.So there, LPWAN serves that pupose.

What is LPWAN ?

LPWAN Stands for Low Power Wide Area Network. This network can cover distance of Kilometres that to with Low Power consumption footprint so such device can have Battery life  of  5- 10 years. The LPWAN generally is characterized by Low Bandwidth with Low Data Rate and operate in Sub Ghz Range.

LPWAN Technologies

There are many LPWAN technologies and standards in the market, The Technologies which are making news in the market are SigFox, LoRa, Symphony Link, and Weightless, LTE-M and Narrowband-IoT  These are recently emerged as new, big players in the space. With 5G technology is over the horizon, can bring drastic shift in the connectivity domain. These companies floated their hardware and the stack in the market, each has some Pros and cons. The user has to. decide  which Technology suits him as per the ground requirement.We will try to see these technologies in some details in the following sections.

NB-IoT

NB-IoT  is released by 3GPP and is the Narrow band technology and may give tough competition to LoRa and Sigfox.It operates in 200 KHz band either in GSM or Guard band of LTE - M. The data rate is low and suits infrequent data communication. The advantage of NB-IoT is due to its simpler waveform: this technology consumes less power. The other important advantage is cost. By choosing chipsets specifically targeted at for NB-IoT , which have simpler RF-hardware , the overall component cost is reduced by significant margin So NB-IoT has good advantages for smart city applications like metering. It is said, the NB-IoT have better building penetration than LTE-M. On the negative side, deploying NB Iot in the US will be difficult because of the prevalence of LTE, and since chips for LTE-M are often relatively expensive. .But it hardware becomes your specific use case; NB-IoT best suitable for to static objects like smart meters.

LTE-M

The LTE-M is also released by 3 GPPP.Its a cellular technology and has good bandwidth and data rate. So the frequent data transmission is possible.As, it has higher data rates, which is important for frequent data transmission use-cases. As compaired to NB-IoT, the front-end hardware  is relatively simple. As  LTE is primarily a US technology, there are other limitations also. For one, we’re still trying the case for power efficiency with LTE-M. There are unavoidable licensing issues which could be irritating. You have to  pay firms like Qualcomm and Inter Digitals to license cellular intellectual property, LTE-M useful in roaming applications such as vehicles or drones.We can see, US service providers pushing LTE-M as they have already invested billions in LTE technology.

LoRa

The LoRa(LongRange) is another popular technology around. The hardware vendor is SemTech and the LoRa Alliance is promoting the ecosystem for the LoRa based LPWAN Devices. The technology operates in sub-GHz band which is Licence free. But for different regions different unlicensed bands are there so the devices suitable for different suitable frequency bands are available. The LoRa Device uses Chirp Spread Spectrum (CSS).The LoRa network consists of a Device ,Gateway,Network Server and Application through whichthe user can extract the data.

The LoRa Alliance is an association .It is open, non-profit organization to working for strengthening ecosystem for  LPWAN technologies like LoRa. It has about 400 members of big companies across North America, Europe, Africa, and Asia, The founder members are IBM,  Cisco, Semtech, Bouygues Telecom,MicroChip, Singtel, KPN, Swisscom, Fastnet, and Belgacom.

LoRaWAN is the open-standard networking layer and ismanaged by the LoRa Alliance. However, the underlying chip is available from Semtech. LoRa is the physical layer: the chip. LoRaWAN is the MAC Layer: the stack that’s put on the chip to enable networking. The advantages are Low cost, Easy deployment,Low Power,open source software and better security of data.Applications include,Lighting,AMR,water metering etc.

SigFox

SigFox is a French company based in Labège Founded in 2009, . SigFox has gaied significant traction in the LPWAN domain as they run successful marketing campaigns in Europe. It also has a vast variety of vendors including Texas Instruments, Silicon Labs, and Axom. Recently, SigFox has concentrated most of its efforts into the rapidly growing European market,

SigFox has proprietary technology, it uses a slow modulation rate to achieve a more extended range. Due to this simpler design , SigFox has become an excellent option for applications where the system needs to send small, infrequent bursts of data.

The Possible applications include parking sensors, Electric meters water meters, or smart garbage cans. However, it also has got some drawbacks. Transmission data back to the devices is severely limited, and signal interference can be an issue.

Symphony Link

Link Labs is a member of LoRa Alliance and it uses the LoRa chip. Link Labs has built their proprietary MAC layer on top of Semtech’s chip and their link is called Symphony Link.

The former members of the Johns Hopkins University founded Link Labs in 2013 .Symphony Link has added vital connectivity features compared to LoRaWAN i.e. guaranteed message receipt, removal of duty cycle limit, firmware upgrade over-the-air, repeater capability, and dynamic range.With these features the Symphony Link can provide a suitable alternative for user’s to tryout.

Weightless

 Founded in 2008, Weightless SIG (special interest group) with a goal of standardizing LPWAN technologies. The promoter groups included Accenture, ARM, M2COMM, Sony-Europe, and Telensa.

Weightless is said to be the only truly open-standard which operates in the sub-1 GHz unlicensed spectrum. There are three types of Weightless that serve different purposes:

Weightless-W: It uses  whitespace (unused local spectrum in licensed TV band)

Weightless-N: It is unlicensed spectrum narrow band protocol from of NWave’s technology

Weightless-P: bidirectional protocol from M2COMM’s Platanus technology

Weightless N and P have become more popular options since Weightless-W has a very shorter battery life.

Weightless-N/NWave

Nwave is considered very similar to SigFox with regards to functionality but has a better MAC-layer implementation. It says to use “advanced demodulation techniques” which enable its network to coexist with other radio technologies without additional noises. Similar to SigFox, it’s best for applications like temperature readings, sensor-based networks,  tank level monitoring, smart metering etc.

Weightless-P

Weightless-P standard uses FDMA+TDMA modulation in narrowband of 12.5 kHz (which is greater than SigFox but less than LoRa). It  has an adaptive data rate,same to Symphony Link (200 bps to 100 kbps). The sensitivity is very high, -134 dBm at 625 bps and it supports both GMSK  and PSK modulation.

Weightless-P could be useful for private networks, more sophisticated use cases, and cases in which controlling of and downlink data /uplink data is important. It is good news  that Development kits for Weightless-P are just available in the market now.

Conclusion

We have seen the LPWAN technologies making waves in the market.Many of them have established their network across the world with good presence mainly in Europe,USA and South East Asia. Every LPWAN company trying their level best to  leave a good footprint across many countries like Sigfox in Europe,LTE-M in USA and LoRa in Korea,South East Asia etc. There are also emerging players which also can create their space in this competitive market. In short, it is good news for IOT(Internet of things) as more and more technologies are available in the market to make it secure,strong and pervasive.