Selecting IoT connectivity protocols for rural development applications

Abstract

Data sensing and collection over vast coverage areas form an integral part of IoT applications such as Smart Farming. Selection of adequate IoT connectivity technologies is an important step in the design process. Overall energy efficiency, availability of low-cost and long-life sensor nodes and achievability of long coverage range of the fixed infrastructure are the main criteria of selection. After a brief description of the scenario of connectivity technologies, this article demonstrates the usefulness of a Low Power Wide Area Networking technology named SigFox for the applications mentioned above. Performance figures in terms of coverage range and protocol throughput (manageable IoT node density) justify this claim.