A survey on LPWA technology: LoRa and NB-IoT

Abstract

By 2020, more than twenty five billion devices would be connected through wireless communications. In accordance with the rapid growth of the internet of things (IoT) market, low power wide area (LPWA) technologies have become popular. In various LPWA technologies, narrowband (NB)-IoT and long range (LoRa) are two leading technologies. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive survey on NB-IoT and LoRa as efficient solutions connecting the devices. It is shown that unlicensed LoRa has advantages in terms of battery lifetime, capacity, and cost. Meanwhile, licensed NB-IoT offers benefits in terms of QoS, latency, reliability, and range.