What is lpwan? What is lpwan technology?

What is LPWAN?

LP (Low Power Wide Area Network), also known as LPWAN or LPN, is a type of wireless network used in the Internet of Things (e.g. battery-powered sensors) and is a wireless network capable lpwa standardof communicating over long distances at low bit rates. lpwan meets both coverage and range requirements. Providing the longest range coverage with the lowest power consumption is the biggest technical advantage of LPWAN.

Three features of Lpwan technology

LPWAN technology is a revolutionary technology used in the world for IoT access in recent years. Long distance, low power consumption and low operation and maintenance are the main features of LPWAN. Compared with the existing technologies such as WiFi, Bluetooth and ZigBee, LPWAN really achieves wide range of development and can realize the full coverage of IoT at low cost.

1.Wide Area Coverage

Lpwan technology enables communication distance between iot devices up to 3-20 km. Low power consumption The use of lpwan technology allows data to be transmitted over long distances in smart cities.

2. Low power consumption

One of the main advantages of using LPWAN is low power consumption. With LPWAN, when an IoT device is not in use, the device will automatically go into sleep mode. And IoT devices consume very little power in sleep mode, so this advantage helps save power. Low power consumption and low usage cause a ripple effect. The battery life of these IoT devices using LPWAN is expected to be 5 to 10 years.

3. Cost reduction

The ability to use LPWAN technology greatly reduces the costs associated with IoT devices for businesses. The characteristics of low power consumption allows IoT device management can be carried out using battery production costs are constantly reduced, the cost of IoT devices are reduced accordingly. In addition, the social cost of maintenance of the device has also been significantly reduced. In addition, the number of gateways to transmit information data through LPWAN will be reduced accordingly, which can further develop to reduce the cost of building economic infrastructure education facilities.

The three main technologies of LPWAN

LP technology is a wireless communication solution that can solve many needs that could not be solved before. However, various types of technologies have emerged in the current LPWAN market. The main LPWAN technologies currently available in the market are NB-IoT, eMTC and LORA.

NB-IoT is an important emerging information technology for IoT applications, supporting cellular system data as connectivity for low-power devices in wide area networks. It is also known as Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN). NB-IoT supports enterprise devices to be able to connect in an efficient way with long standby time and high requirements for network structure connection design. It is claimed that the battery life of NB-IoT devices we can further improve to at least 10 years.

eMTC as an IoT application scenario. It has the characteristics of high reliability and low latency. eMTC is mainly applied to the communication needs between devices.

Lora is a patented technology for which Semtech provides chips. lora technology changes the trade-off between transmission distance and power consumption, providing users with a simple system that enables long-range, long-distance, and high-capacity, thus extending sensor networks.

Currently, LORA is the most mature and stable narrowband IoT communication technology compared to NB-IoT. Its free dedicated network is far superior to the NB network where operators keep charging, and LoRa does not require lifetime payment. However, the application of LORA in IoT communication development is difficult, long-period and has high entry barrier. Operators will adopt NB-IoT and eMTC, while Lora will focus on enterprise applications.

3 kinds of LPWAN technology development applications for scenarios

LPWAN technology can play an important role in the construction of smart cities. For example, smart street lights, humidity sensors, smart meters and smart parking lots do not need very high data rate, but need very wide coverage. This is especially true for parking management, smart cold chain, and smart meter reading.

Application of Lpwan technology in smart meter reading

In the application of smart meter reading solution, meter reading terminals of water, electricity, gas and heat upload data to local LoRaWAN base station through LoRaWAN communication module. LoRaWAN communication module can control thousands of terminals in one lora wan base station, and then upload data to server through cellular backbone network.

Application of LPWAN technology in smart cold chain

In smart cold chain solution, temperature and humidity information is collected by each collector through LORA transmission module, and then uploaded to LORA gateway, cellular network, internet to cloud platform, and customers can monitor the status in real time in the background.

Application of Lpwan Technology in Smart Street Light

In the smart street light solution, the architecture of LoRaWAN is similar to meter reading. The data of each node needs to be collected by base station and then uploaded to the cloud through the backend management system to realize the functions of street light fault alarm, security monitoring, emergency call, etc.