Demystifying low-power wide-area communications for city IoT applications

Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) communication technologies have the potential to provide a step change in the enablement of cost-effective and energy efficient Internet of Things (IoT) applications. With an increase in the number of offerings available the real performance of these emerging technologies remain unclear. That is, each technology comes with its own advantages and limitations; yet there is a lack of comparative studies that examine their trade-offs based on empirical evidence. This poses a major challenge to IoT solution architects and developers in selecting an appropriate technology for an envisioned IoT application in a given deployment context. In this paper, we look beyond data sheets and white papers of LPWA communication technologies and provide insights into the performance of three emerging LPWA solutions based on real world experiments with different traffic loads and in different urban deployment contexts. Under the context of this study, specialized hardware was created to incorporate the different technologies and provide scientific quantitative and qualitative information related to data rates, success rates, transmission mode energy and power consumption, and communication ranges. The results of experimentation highlight the practicalities of placing LPWA technologies in real spaces and provide guidelines to IoT solution developers in terms of LPWA technology selection. Overall aim is to facilitate the design of new LPWA technologies and adaptive communication strategies that inform future IoT platforms.