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Procedia Computer Science 155 (2019) 636–641

The 6th International Symposium on Emerging Inter-Networks, Communications and Mobility

The 6th International Symposium on Emerging Inter-Networks, Communications and Mobility
(EICM)
August 19-21, (EICM)
2019, Halifax, Canada
August 19-21, 2019, Halifax, Canada
A comparative Survey Study on LPWA IoT Technologies: Design,
A comparative Survey Study challenges
considerations, on LPWA andIoT solutions
Technologies: Design,
considerations, challenges and solutions
Franck Muteba*, Karim Djouani and Thomas Olwal
Franck Muteba*, Karim Djouani and Thomas Olwal
Department of Electrical Engineering and F’SATI Tshwane University of Technology Pretoria, South Africa, 0001
Department of Electrical Engineering and F’SATI Tshwane University of Technology Pretoria, South Africa, 0001

Abstract
Abstract
Based on the recent studies, by 2020 devices connected to internet are predicted to increase up to 22 billion. In compliance with
Based on growth
the rapid the recent studies, of
of internet by things
2020 devices connected
(IoT), Low power to internet
wide area are predicted
Network to increase
(LPWA) up to 22play
technologies billion.
a bigInrole
compliance with
in connecting
billions
the rapidofgrowth
devices. This paper
of internet aims to
of things analyze
(IoT), Lowthe existing
power wide standard NB-IoT,
area Network LORA,
(LPWA) Wi-Fi HaLow
technologies play (802.11ah)
a big role inused as low
connecting
billions
power wideof devices. This paper
area Network (LPWA) aimsintowireless
analyzenetwork,
the existing
in termstandard
of theirNB-IoT, LORA, Wi-Fi
power efficiency, QoS, HaLow
cost and(802.11ah) used as The
coverage distance. low
power
outcome wide
of area
the Network
research (LPWA)
shows that in wireless network, in
each technology term ofitstheir
presents power efficiency,
advantages QoS, cost and
and disadvantages basedcoverage
on thedistance.
type of The
the
application
outcome of considered.
the researchIt is shown
shows thatthateach
despite the improvement
technology presents itsof researches
advantages on andexisting LPWA technologies,
disadvantages based on thethere typeare
of still
the
application considered.
issues that need It is shown
to be addressed. Thus,that despite
this paper the improvement
gives of researches
some open issues for futureonresearch.
existing LPWA technologies, there are still
issues that need to be addressed. Thus, this paper gives some open issues for future research.
© 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.
© 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.
© 2019
This The
is an Authors.
open accessPublished by Elsevier
article under the CC B.V.
BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
Peer-review
This is an under
open responsibility
access article of
under the
the Conference
CC BY-NC-ND
Peer-review under responsibility of the Conference Program Program Chairs.
license
Chairs.(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
Peer-review under responsibility of the Conference Program Chairs.
Keywords: Internet of things (IoT); LoRA, Wi-fi HaLow (802.11ah), wireless network, NB-IoT, QOS, power efficient .
Keywords: Internet of things (IoT); LoRA, Wi-fi HaLow (802.11ah), wireless network, NB-IoT, QOS, power efficient .

1. Introduction
1. Introduction
Nowadays the fourth industrial revolution is shown as an era in which machines and devices are connected
Nowadays the fourth
wirelessly. Various industrial are
technologies revolution
used to is shown communication
establish as an era in which
betweenmachines
devices and
overdevices are connected
long distance. One of
wirelessly. Variousistechnologies
the most popular low power wideare used
areatonetwork
establish(LPWA).
communication between devices
This technology over long
accomplishes longdistance. Onelow
range and of
the most
power popularatisthelow
operation powerofwide
expense area rate
low data network (LPWA).
and high latencyThis technology
(order accomplishes
of seconds or minutes). long range and used
It is preferably low
power operation at the expense of low data rate and high latency (order of seconds or minutes). It is preferably used
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +27734945736
*E-mail address: 216023650@tut4life.ac.za
Corresponding author. Tel.: +27734945736
E-mail address: 216023650@tut4life.ac.za

1877-0509 © 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.

This is an open
1877-0509 access
© 2019 Thearticle under
Authors. the CC BY-NC-ND
Published license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
by Elsevier B.V.
Peer-review
This under
is an open responsibility
access of the Conference
article under CC BY-NC-NDProgram Chairs.
license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
Peer-review under responsibility of the Conference Program Chairs.

1877-0509 © 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.

This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
Peer-review under responsibility of the Conference Program Chairs.
10.1016/j.procs.2019.08.090
 Franck Muteba et al. / Procedia Computer Science 155 (2019) 636–641 637
2 Franck Muteba/ EICM (2019) 0000-0000

for applications that are delay tolerant and do not require high data rate [1]. LPWA is more attractive because of its
ability to offer low power and massive connectivity to IoT devices over large geographical areas at low cost [2].
According to the International Energy Agency by 2020, there will be over 20 billion of network enabled devices [3].
The relevance of LPWA network resides in the fact that whenever the internet area coverage increases, there are
technical capabilities that manage various devices [4].
LPWA offers better signal propagation to hard-to reach indoor places such as basements (+20dB gain over legacy
cellular system is targeted). Provides connection of end devices to the base station greater than tens kilometers
depending on the deployment (urban or rural); and most of LPWA use sub-GHz band because it offers robust and
reliable communication at low power budget [1][5][6].
In term of communication distance, LPWA is suitable for all applications which require high coverage distance and
have limited latency needs. This includes non-critical infrastructure monitoring and environmental monitoring [7].
LPWA is expected to serve in diverse range of application and scenario such as: smart cities (e.g., parking
management and smart metering), personal IoT application, wildlife monitoring and tracking, industrial assets
monitoring etc. LPWA enables easy deployment of smart sensors throughout the area without management of a
complex mesh network. Thus, most LPWA use the star network topology to save huge energy by connecting end
devices straight to the base station [1][7].
At present LPWA is growing fast in IoT market. Many LPWA technologies are developed both in the licensed and
unlicensed spectra. Although we have many LPWA technologies, this paper focuses on the comparison of Wi-Fi
HaLow, LoRa and NB-IoT which are promising technologies in term of service demand, cost and power efficiency.
This survey paper objective is to guide researchers and industrials users of IoT in their choice of LPWA
technologies. Thus, this paper clearly describes the major technical parameters of Wi-Fi HaLow, LoRa and NB-IoT
to help the user to choose the adequate technology according to the specific IoT application area. Because each
specific application area requires an appropriate technology according to its expectations.
The paper is organized as follow: section II discusses LPWA standard techniques. In section III, the technical
comparison between the 3 technologies is addressed. Section IV presents the challenges faced by the three
technologies. Section V presents the conclusion of the paper.

2. LPWA Standard, Techniques

LPWA technologies are suitable for applications that are delay tolerant, do not require high data rate, do require low
power consumption and large coverage distance. LPWA applications are quite different, main areas of difference
can be identified: healthcare, smart city, transportation, and logistics, etc.

2.1 Low Power

There are several factors on which the battery lifetime depends; among them, the network topology and the duty
cycle.
 Topology: IoT devices are expected to work for a very long time (several years). Therefore, a battery lifetime
of 10 years or more is desirable to bring the maintenance cost down. Mesh topology is used to extend the
coverage of short-range wireless network, its high deployment cost is a disadvantage in connecting many end
user devices over long geographical distance. When there is traffic over multihops, some nodes get congested,
implying depletion of their battery which limits the overall network lifetime to few month or year. Thus, most
LPWA use start topology which eliminates the energy consumed through packet multihop network [1] and
connect devices straight to the base station which brings huge energy saving advantage. Compared to mesh
topology, in star topology the devices need not to waste precious energy in busy-listening to other devices that
want to rely on their traffic through them. The base station is kept always switched ON to provide suitable and
quick access when required by the end-devices. Furthermore, some LPWA support tree and mesh topologies but
require quite complex protocol design.
 Duty cycle: Low power is achieved by turning off devices when data is not transmitted. LPWA duty cycle is
adapted on application, type of power source, and traffic (data transmitted or not). The transceiver or receiver is
ON only when data need to be transmitted. When an application needs to transmit data in uplink mode, the end
devices may wakeup only if data are ready to be conveyed. In contrast, when downlink mode is required for
transmission, the end-devices make sure to listen when the base station is transmitting. The end-devices realize
this by agreeing on a listening schedule [8]. In realm of LPWA, using duty cycle to transmit data is not only a
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Franck Muteba/ Procedia Computer Science 130 (2019) 1077–1084 3

way to save power but also a requirement by the legislation. The regional regulation on sharing spectrum sets
the time a single transmitter can occupy the spectrum to make sure there is coexistence with other devices using
the same channel.

2.2 Long Range Communication

LPWA offers better signal propagation to hard-to reach indoor places such as basements (+20dB over legacy
cellular system is targeted), thus, enable end-to-end devices connection over a distance ranging from few to tens
kilometers depending on the deployment environment (rural or urban) [1][8]. Wide area refers to a distance that can
be reached directly without the need of any mesh network to extend the network [7]. Two techniques can be used to
achieve long distance: Sub-GHz and special modulation schemes.
Sub-GHz is used by most of LPWA because of it its reliability and robust communication and low power budget.
Compared with 2.4 GHz Sub-GHz, it presents less attenuation of frequencies and less congestion and multipath
fading caused by obstacles and dense surfaces like concrete walls. By its robustness and high reliability, Sub-GHz
realizes long communication and low power consumption.
Special modulation schemes: LPWA designed to reach a distance ranging from few to tens kilometers with a link
budget around 150dB. Two techniques namely narrowband and spread technique are adopted by different LPWA.
Narrowband provides a high link budget by encoding the signal with low bandwidth (less than 25KHz) e.g.: NB-
IoT. Spread spectrum technique spreads a narrowband signal over a wider frequency band with the same power
density. [1]. The coverage of LoRa can be estimated as large as a city while NB-IoT coverage is limited to LTE
coverage, which makes NB-IoT not convenient for sub-urban and rural areas where often there is no LTE coverage
network and makes LoRa suitable for such areas [8].
The coverage distance of Wi-fi HaLow is estimated at 1 km which is lower than the one for NB-IoT and LoRa (10
km). In general NB-IoT offers better coverage distance than LoRa and Wi-fi HaLow, because it uses LTE network
which offers large radio coverage range.

2.3 Low Cost

The cost is one of the major keys in the success of LPWA, therefore LPWA adopts several ways of reducing the
cost: the use of star topology instead of mesh topology, reduction of hardware complexity (transceiver footprint,
peak data rate, memory sizes), minimum infrastructure (one base station connects 1000 end devices), the use of
license-free or owned license bands. Some LPWA uses cellular band to avoid licensing cost.
The total cost of LoRa and Wi-fi HaLow is often lower than the one for NB-IoT, because of the spectrum cost.
Since Wi-fi HaLow is license-exempt and LoRa is unlicensed that makes their total cost lower. For NB-IoT the
spectrum can be estimated at 500 million USD/MHz while it is free of charge for LoRa and Wi-fi HaLow. The
deployment cost of NB-IoT is estimated at 15000 USD/station while it is about 1000 USD/ station for LoRA and
Wi-fi HaLow [4].

2.4 Quality of Service (QoS)

LPWA is used in many applications on which the requirements are not the same; some applications can tolerate the
delay (for example, smart metering), other cannot tolerate the delay in transmission (for example, monitoring
parameter such blood pressure of a pregnant woman). Thus, quality of service depends on different application uses.
The fact that LoRa uses unlicensed spectrum, CSS modulation technique (immune to interference , multipath and
fading) and asynchronous MAC protocol does not provide better quality of service (QoS) than NB-IoT and Wi-fi
HaLow since NB-IoT is based on LTE network (licensed) which is a cellular network designed for optimal quality
of service and Wi-fi HaLow has the possibility of integration with Wi-Fi Network, offering a high signal penetration
and MIMO support providing advantage such installing the sensor not in line of sight [4].

3.Technical Comparison

In this section, a detailed discussion of specifications of the 3 LPWA techniques under consideration are presented.

3.1 Wi-Fi HaLow

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Wi-Fi technology consumes too much power, so the Wi-Fi Alliance introduced a new standard IEEE 802.11ah
known as Wi-fi HaLow designed to operate in unlicensed frequency bands. This technology offers low power
consumption and wide coverage area for IoT devices. Many MAC features are added to extend the area coverage
distance and the number of devices to support. Wi-fi HaLow can support up to 8191 devices associated with an
access point (AP) [10]. As most of LPWA Wi-fi HaLow also used Sub-GHz frequency band and can transmit up to
1 km in outdoor areas. Comparatively to LoRa and NB-IoT, its data rate is higher; it reaches at least 150 Kbps [12].
To optimize large number of device and long battery lifetime, Wi-Fi HaLow provides a short frame format, short
control/management, bi-directional and asymmetric transmission which give more efficiency. Wi-Fi HaLow reduces
power consumption by using a mechanism called Target wake time (TWT), by extending the sleeping mode while
listening to the interval protocol. Target wake time (TWT) allows device to determine when and how regularly they
will wake up to send or receive data. It enables the access point (AP) to efficiently increase device sleeping time and
considerably preserve the battery lifespan. In addition to saving the device power, TWT enables the wireless access
point and devices to exchange and define precise times to access the medium. This optimizes the spectra efficiency
by reducing connection and overlap between users [12].
Wi-fi HaLow defines two mode of operation: (1) TIM mode and (2) non-TIM mode. Station working in one of these
two modes are mentioned as TIM and non-TIM stations; separately, TIM stations access periodically to the medium
and are classically used for high bandwidth requirements and receive both downlink and uplink access. TIM stations
wake up periodically to receive data broadcasted by the AP (Access Point). On the other hand, non-TIM stations do
not wake up periodically to receive data but they transmit data to the associated AP every listen interval. Non-TIM
stations are destined to exchange data with the AP anytime they wake up.
To reduce collisions and interference, a Restricted Access Window (RAW) mechanism was introduced by the
standard. This mechanism allows the reservation of specific time window for specific station. As such RAW is used
to restrict access to a specified group of station.

3.2 LoRa
Lora is a proprietary technology based on spread spectrum modulation which uses Chirp Spread Spectrum (CSS)
modulation at his PHY layer. CSS modulation is known for its long-range and robustness against interference. LoRa
modulation is both frequency and bandwidth scalable. It can be used for wideband direct sequence application and
narrowband frequency hopping [11]. Due to its high bandwidth and its asynchronous mode, LoRa signal is very
resistant to both in-band and out-band interference. Lora offers immunity to multipath and fading; thus it is ideal for
urban and suburban areas. LoRa can transmit a maximum data rate of 50 kbps depending on the spreading factor and
the channel bandwidth. Moreover, messages conveyed using different spreading factors can be received at the same
time by LoRa base station [9]. Each message has 243 bytes as maximum payload length.
LoRaWAN is a LoRa based communication protocol standardized by LoRa-Alliance in 2015. It is a cloud-based
MAC layer protocol but acts as a network layer protocol to manage communication between LPWAN gate and end-
node devices as a routing protocol. Each message transmitted by an end device using LoRa is received by all the
base station in the range. To meet many applications requirements, LoRaWAN provides three classes of devices.
 Class A (bi-directional end-devices): In this class each uplink transmission is followed by two short
downlink receive windows. Class A devices are powered by battery and designed primarily for energy
efficiency. The device is always on sleep mode unless there is data to transmit.
 Class B (bi-directional end devices with scheduled receive slots): These devices are powered by battery
and mainly designed as actuator devices. Energy efficiency is still a concern for this class devices, but not
as much as for class A devices. Devices schedule a synchronised beacon to let the server know that the end
device is listening.
 Class C (bi-directional end devices with maximal receive slot): These are actuator devices like class B
devices but powered on a permanent (main) source. Class C devices use more power to operate than class
A and B but offer the lowest latency for end device communication, and they can afford to listen
continuously

3.3 NB-IoT
NB-IoT is an LPWA technology released by 3GPP in June 2016 for data perception and acquisition for IoT low data
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Franck Muteba/ Procedia Computer Science 130 (2019) 1077–1084 5

rate applications. Compared to other LPWA technologies, NB-IoT has the advantage of cellular solutions, thus, it
does not have duty cycle regulation because operating on licensed band. It has great potential to meet the need of
IoT in term of machine type communication [5]. It can be deployed in three modes which are Guard band, in Band
and Stand Alone.
 Stand Alone mode is a scenario where there is a possibility of using GSM frequencies band, with
200KHz as bandwidth with a guard interval of 10 KHz on both sides.
 Guard Band mode is a scenario where the unused resource block is used within LTE carrier’s guard-
band.
 In-Band is a mode/scenario where there is coexistence with the LTE carrier’s band. NB-IoT can be
supported only if its software is upgraded in addition to the existing LTE infrastructure.

Table 1:Comparative Characteristics of the Standards

Parameters Lora NB-IoT Wi-Fi

HaLow
Frequency band 868 868 900
(MHz)
Device capacity 10000 150000 8191
per cell
Data rate 0.3 - 50 kbps 0.3 - 4000 kbps 150kbps -
Typical 200 kbps 347 Mbps

Battery life Up to 10 years Up to 10 years but less than what Up to 10

LoRa and wifi Halow present. years
Cost $ 100-1000 per BS Requires a base station upgrade. $ 100-1000
Estimated cost is $ 15000 for the per BS
BS

Duty cycle/tx 1 to 10% - 2%

restriction
QOS Low High Medium

4.Chalenges Faced by these Technologies

LPWA is growing fast in IoT market. Many LPWA technologies are developed both in the licensed and unlicensed
spectra. Here are some challenges faced by LPWA technologies.
 Scalability: The support of massive number of devices is one of the crucial features of LoRa, Wi-fi HaLow
and NB-IoT. As the number of end devices is growing, their performance drops exponentially. Thus,
scalability in big area becomes a big challenge. Therefore, several techniques are considered to cope up
with this scalability problem such as the use of the protocol ALHOA to be able to scale with several
devices connected, the efficient exploitation of diversity in channel, opportunistic spectrum and adaptative
transmission. More studies suggest the adaptation of end devices to LoRa communication parameters
possibly with help from powerful base station using base station diversity to deal with this challenge [8].
 Frequency band and interference control mitigation: LPWA standards operating in unlicensed bands
(LoRa and Wi-Fi-HaLow) face great difficulties because of their limitation in term of radio band. The
maximum power radiated is around 500mW, which is the maximum in Europe in general, but in some
region (Russia) the maximum power transmitted in unlicensed band is 10 to 20 times smaller than 500mW;
which causes reduction of the area to cover and a reduction of the signal strength; thus, makes the
implementation difficult due to the limitation of the frequency band.
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Devices operating in the shared ISM band will face unusual levels of both cross-technology interference as
well as self-interference which is accentuated with the increasing number of IoT devices. Some studies
suggest an adaptative transmission scheduling across the space, time and frequency to minimize
interference and achieve best reliability. Another way to address this issue is to propose rules at the
regulation level to enable efficient sharing and cooperation between different wireless technologies in
unlicensed band [1][4][8].
 Hight transmission data rate and modulation techniques: The transmission at a high data rate is not a key
characteristic for these standards, as it is often sacrificed to meet some others important parameters such as
the maximum range and power consumption. However, it is important for certain type of application which
require high data rate, such as blood pressure monitoring, real-time high-quality video, etc. Wi-fi HaLow
presents the highest data rate, which can be up to 347 Mbps (with a minimum of 150 kbps). NB-IoT
presents a maximum transmission data rate up to 4Mbps which is better comparatively to LoRa (50 kbps).
LoRa is mainly designed for organization sensors which do not require to transmit a large amount of data,
thus its maximum transmission of data is limited in the range of 0.3 to 50 kbps. To simultaneously achieve
long range, high energy efficiency, and high data rate performance, one research solution approached
consists of implementing multiple modulation schemes for a single IoT device in such a way that
depending on the application needs, devices can switch between different modulation schemes [4][8].

5. Conclusion

This survey paper compared the three LPWA standards (NB-IoT, LoRa, Wi-Fi HaLow) in term of their main
characteristics. Considering the three solutions proposed for LPWA, each of them presents its own advantages and
disadvantages depending on the type of applications considered. The paper has provided a clear description on their
different features as well as different performances using the later as metrics for comparison between them. To meet
LPWA design goals, the paper has shown that there is still issues which need to be clarified despite the evolution of
technologies.

Acknowledgment

The author would like to thank the department of Electrical Engineering at Tshwane university of technology for
assistance and guidance for enabling the accomplishment of this present research work.

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