Survey on 3GPP Low Power Wide Area Technologies and its Application

Abstract

LPWA (Low Power Wide Area) technology, with the characteristics of wide coverage, low power consumption, and low cost, is quite attracted. It is very suitable for IoT (Internet of Things) business that requires long-distance transmission, the small quantity of data, long battery-life, and cost sensitiveness. Through the analysis of the origin, background and application scenarios, it is pointed out that the development of the IoT has accelerated the rise of LPWA. Currently, LPWA technology is mainly divided into two categories, that is, the technologies based on unlicensed spectrum such as LoRa, Sigfox and RPMA, and the authorized spectrum-based cellular technologies such as NB-IoT, EC-GSM, LTE-M, etc. These main technologies are described, and their coverage capacity, network capacity, power consumption, module cost, industry support, and maturity are compared and summarized. Finally, the positioning of application scenario is described.