Analysis of which industries LoRa is suitable for

Introduction to LoRa

LoRa is an ultra-long-distance, low-power IoT solution provided by Semtech. Semtech and many industry-leading companies, such as Cisco, IBM and Microchip, initiated the LoRa (Long Range, Wide Range) Alliance and are committed to promoting its alliance standard LoRaWAN technology to meet various needs for wide area coverage and low power consumption. M2M device application requirements. LoRaWAN currently has more than 150 members, and several Chinese companies are involved. It has been commercially deployed in several European countries, and has also begun to be used domestically.

Analysis of which industries LoRa is suitable for

From the analysis and evaluation of LoRa technology, LoRa’s advantages are mainly reflected in low power consumption and low cost. When the frequency band interference is small enough, its coverage capability and capacity can also meet the needs of LPWA. Because the technical characteristics are different, one technology cannot fully meet the existing or future low-traffic IoT application needs. At the same time, the maturity stages of various technologies are also different. In the future, multiple technologies may coexist in the market. Comparing LoRa with the current mainstream 3GPP standard technology (the evaluation of 3GPP standards mainly refers to 3GPP related research reports and GSMA research reports), it can be seen that the main characteristics of various technologies are different, and the types of applications they can cover are also different. ,As shown in Figure 4. The shortcomings of LTE-MTC are mainly cost and battery capacity, but it is also sufficient to meet the requirements of wearable applications; while the NB-IoT solution is relatively balanced. The current question that may exist is whether the cost meets the needs of IoT applications. The main shortcomings of the LoRa solution are its support for mobility and the problem of latency, so it is not suitable for real-time applications such as highly mobile applications or industrial system monitoring.

It will take at least 2 years for LTE-MTC and NB-IoT to mature in the industry chain. However, LoRa has already met the commercial conditions for some M2M application characteristics, and LoRa’s price and power consumption have great competitive advantages, so it can be considered for dense distribution in applications. deployed in the area. Before technologies such as LTE-MTC and NB-IoT are commercialized, there will be a time window to transfer some existing M2M services to networks such as LoRa.

Referring to the LPWA business requirements sorted out by GSMA, it is recommended that LoRa businesses choose businesses with smaller data volumes, deep coverage requirements and certain battery requirements, see the table above!

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