What is Low Power Wide Area IoT

summarize

The rapid growth of the IoT industry has resulted in a large number of IoT devices that require networking, stable and reliable communications, and traditionalcommunications technologyfor exampleWiFiCellular networks, satellite networks, etc. require a lot of energy to support them, and if a large number of sensing devices are to be networked through, they consume a lot of power and are costly, making them unsuitable for the entire environment of the IoT.

LPWAN (Lower Power Wide Area Network) Low Power Wide Area Network technology has become more and more popular in recent years with the development of the Internet of Things, according to theGlobal Market Insights Inc.A new research report published in 2021, size in 2020 more than 2.5 billion U.S. dollars, is expected from 2021 to 2027 at a CAGR of more than 60% growth, by 2027, low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) market size will be more than 80 billion U.S. dollars!

The architecture of the Internet of Things is simply divided into three levels

• Sensing Layer: Information from each environment will be used to collect data through sensors, also known as the physical layer
• Network Layer: The collected data and information are transmitted or processed through the network and communication protocols.
• Application Tier: End users provide application-specific services, which include the applications that users use to interact with the system.

Low-power WANs refer to a class of technologies that have been developed as cost-effective networks for IoT applications. Because of their higher power efficiency, it costs less to operate than traditional mobile networks, and LPWANs are also able to support more devices over a larger area than traditional network solutions. This makes LPWANs an excellent choice for the data communication needs of IoT and machine learning applications, which utilize large numbers of connected devices andtransducers. there are two main technologies for LPWAN.LoRarespond in singingNB-IoTOne is a non-cellular technology and the other is a technology that utilizes existing mobile communication networks.

historical development

Before cellular networks were even commercially available, there were many industries that had already adopted today's M2M approach to low-power endpoint IoT links, using topologies and network architectures very similar to those of today. Some of the more typical applications include the following

DataTAC: This narrowband data network technology was originally developed by MDI (NobileData International) in the U.S., using ARDIS network technology (a collaboration between IBM and Motoral), operating in the frequency band of 800 MHz, with a data transfer rate of 19.2 kb/s. It is characterized by data penetration, and is used in security, fleet tracking, credit card authorization, and sales automation, credit card authorization and sales automation.ARDISAt that time, it covered regions such as the U.S., Canada, Germany, Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, etc. Even Hong Kong deployed the network. 1996, there were more than 44,000 subscribers around the world, but the tariffs at that time were more expensive, at $39 per month (for 100 messages) or 3 cents per 100 bytes.

Mobex: This technology was developed by Televerket Radio in Sweden and perfected by Ericsson. It operates in the 400-450Mhz band in Europe, using 12.5kHz bandwidth for data transmission, with a maximum rate of 8kb/s, and a maximum coverage area of 30 kilometers. This technology is used in public transportation, security and other projects, the United States 9.11 incident, this technology plays a great role. mobex in more than 30 countries and regions around the world to achieve the deployment, the formation of a large number of operators, in the United Kingdom, all the car failure information are transmitted to the fault service provider through this technology. But also because of the rise of GSM, gradually shrinking until completely shut down!

AlarmNet:: It is a data communication technology developed by Honeywell specifically for fire protection, using the 928 MHz license-free frequency band with very low transmission rates. This technology is still one of the key services of Honeywell's alarm networking system.

With the popularization of cellular technology, digital cell phones officially began to promote in 1995 (when the network speed of only 9.6kB/s), GSM in the global popularity of the deployment of more vendors in the device embedded in the GPRS module, the cost of the module and the tariff traffic is rapidly declining, 2G technology will be the above several technologies are gradually subverted, the GPRS long-term rule for a long time, wireless meter reading, wireless public telephony and many other markets grew rapidly. By 2020, operators are mainly pushing 4G networks, 5G is ready for commercialization, and 2G networks are ready to retire. But a large number of IoT devices need low-power, low-rate, paragraph coverage links, such an era, new technologies appeared, LoRa and NB-IoT technology is accepted by more and more scenarios, we are beginning to enter the era of low-power wide area network, the market similar technology is as follows:

• NB-IoT :: NB-IoT is built on cellular networks, consuming only about 180 kHz of bandwidth, and can be deployed directly on GSM networks, UMTS networks or LTE networks to reduce deployment costs and enable smooth upgrades
• LoRa; is a low-power LAN wireless standard developed by semtech
• Sigfox:: An ultra-narrowband technology developed by Sigfox in France
• LTE-M: LTE-M is a wireless system provided by the industry association GSMA and the 3GPP standards organization.One of the main advantages of LTE-M is that it enables global connectivity and LTE-M is the only system suitable for tracking moving objects over long periods of time. This technology improves indoor and outdoor coverage and supports network architectures with a large number of low throughput devices, low latency sensitivity, ultra-low device cost, low device power consumption
• mioty:mioty is a patented technology originating from the Fraunhofer IIS, adopted by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) as a specification for the Low Throughput Network (LTN) series of Telegraph Split Ultra-Narrowband (TS-UNB), licensed to BehrTech for commercialization. The modulation is based on Gaussian Minimum Frequency Shift Keying (GMSK), with a nominal coverage of 15 kilometers and a battery life of up to 20 years.
• Weightless:: Weightless is a wireless connectivity specification for low-power wide-area networks designed for the Internet of Things, using the Sub-GHz license-free frequency band.The Weightless Special Interest Group (SIG) is a non-profit global standards organization that coordinates work on the Weightless standard.
• RPMA: A proprietary LPWAN technology stack developed by Ingenu. Founded in 2008 in San Diego, California, the company was formed by former Qualcomm engineers and was originally called On-Ramp Wireless.
• Wize:Derived from the European standard EN-13757 Wireless M-bus.Wize is an IoT standard defined by the Wize consortium for applications such as wireless metering, smart cities, and industrial IoT.Wize operates in the 169 MHz band.
• Telensa:: The Company is a provider of wireless surveillance systems, applying its smart wireless technology to markets such as healthcare, security, vehicle tracking and smart metering, with a particular focus on remote control and management of street lighting and parking.
• NB-Fi:: YesWAVIoTA set of IoT standards developed to support up to 4.3 billion devices in a single network, each with a 32-bit ID.

Development status

According to IoT Analytics' 2021 release of theThe "LPWAN Market Report 2021-2026, despite the impact of the epidemic and chipset shortages, the market for low-power wide area networks (LPWANs) continues to grow at a high rate, with the entire status quo based on the following directions

Integration is centered around four key technologies

There are also a number of technologies for LPWAN, but they are mainly centered around a few key technologies, with NB-IoT, LoRa, Sigfox, and LTE-MZ accounting for a major share of the overall market volume, with the data for 2021 showing that these four technologies account for 961 TP3 T of share.NB-IoT accounted for 471 TP3T and LoRa for 361 TP3T.

Progress has been most rapid in the Chinese market

According to the report, China is the largest adopter in the LPWAN market and has the highest number of deployed devices for NB-IoT and LoRa, accounting for 76% of the entire world in 2021. but the trade war is an issue, and the West believes that NB-IoT is a technology that belongs to China, and therefore avoids using NB-IoT in favor of LTE-M

Smart metering is the biggest LPWAN use case

Smart metering is one of the earliest and by far the most adopted use cases in the LPWAN market. China Telecom has over 20 million smart water meters and over 25 million gas meters connected to the NB-IoT network, theNICIGAS, Nippon Gas Co.having completed the retrofit of 850,000 gas meters with Sigfox connections.Birdzwill connect 3 million LoRa-connected smart water meters in France over the next decade, and a 5+ million NB-IoT smart meter metering project is underway in Saudi Arabia.

Low-power satellite IoT connectivity on the way

Achieving ubiquitous network coverage at a fraction of the cost of traditional satellite solutions is setting the technology up for potential market success in the second half of the 1920s or the 2030s, with several startups testing the use of satellites to deliver signals, and better coverage of the Internet of Things. These companies includeAstrocast(math.) genusMyriotarespond in singingSwarm Technologies(Acquired by SpaceX)

The migration from 2G/3G to NB-IoT/LTE-M is happening now!

The LPWAN market will eventually cover most IoT deployments that currently rely on 2G / 3G technologies. This migration path will help drive the large amount of capacity expected for these technologies. China Mobile has already stopped adding new 2G IoT connections and has begun shutting down parts of its 2G network to accelerate the migration to NB-IoT networks. But there are other countries that still retain 2G technology, so the migration is gradually proceeding at a faster pace.