An application based comparative study of LPWAN technologies for IoT environment

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a prospect of communication that defines the framework of physical objects, embedded with sensors, programs, and other innovations for transferring data across the internet to other devices and networks. LPWAN (Low Power Wide Area Network) has become a significant part for the implementation of a large-scale IoT paradigm. Recently, new protocols of LPWAN technologies have been introduced, such as LoRa, NB-IoT and Sigfox. They are considered as the leading protocols as they have wide range accessibility, low power consumption and highly cost-efficient in communication proficiency. Our major objective with this review paper is to furnish a descriptive and comparative survey of these technologies to emphasize the significance of LPWAN technology in the development and improvement of IoT based applications. Our focal point of study is to specialize the technical deviation of LPWAN protocols in terms of their features, which include pros and cons, architectural view of networking system and their applications in usage. This study shows the benefits of Sigfox and LoRa provides with long term battery life, efficient power usage, and low expense over NB-IoT. It also explains the advantages of NB-IoT in terms of latency and service quality (QoS). The whole study was done with to reach a conclusion where we ensure their best uses in different scenarios.