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Low Energy Consumption with NB-IoT, LoRaWAN and Sigfox
Networks evolve, radio design remains key
Version 1.0 Published 01.02.2021
Authors: Harald Naumann and Wilhelm Oelers
Future wireless technologies will enable ultra-fast, feature-rich and highly secure cellular networks that will work for ten years on one battery and also offer delay times of 1 ms.
LPWAN is the abbreviation for Low Power Wide Area Network. Wide area networks include GSM, UMTS and LTE, among others. LPWAN includes NB-IoT, LoRaWAN, SIGFOX, Weightless and many more.
The term “low power” is unfortunate. Power is the English word for performance, which is insignificant here. What matters is the energy consumption, and that energy is obtained by multiplying the power with time. So it would be better termed a LEWAN (Low Energy Wide Area Network). In general, there are many in the LPWA world Concepts thrown around, theses put forward and the facts often not questioned.
With this report, we want to shed some light on the darkness of the terms and discuss the differences between LPWAN technologies to help the reader make informed choices of technology for their LPWAN solution.