An Evaluation Of Low Power Wide Area Network
Technologies For The Internet Of Things
Keith E. Nolan, Wael Guibene, Mark Y. Kelly
Intel Labs Europe, Intel, Leixlip, Dublin, Ireland Email: {keith.nolan,wael.guibene,mark.y.kelly}@intel.com
Abstract—We explore the state of the art in solutions for low
power wide area (LPWA) networks and technologies serving
the Internet of Things (IoT) and Connectivity for Everything
markets. These networks are forecast to capture up to 55%
market share using battery-powered devices operating up to 10
years and link distances measured in tens of kilometers. In this
paper, we survey two LPWA technologies; ultra-narrow band
solutions by SigFox and the LoRa technology by Semtech. Both
technologies operate in the licence-exempt industrial, scientific,
& medical (ISM) bands (EU 868 MHz / US 915 MHz). We survey
both solutions in terms of physical layer (PHY) and associated
medium access control (MAC) capabilities from an end-to-end
system viewpoint. We then proceed to explore coverage ranges in
eastern Ireland. We present results indicating a potential coverage
area of 3, 800 km2 and from a real-world experimental test case
involving the use of SigFox’s technology operating over a 25 km
test link between a 25 mW LPWA client test and a basestation.
Finally, we provide example results demonstrating a received
SNR consistently exceeding 20 dB over this test link distance.
Index Terms—internet of things, sensors, wireless communica-
tions
I. I NTRODUCTION
The Internet of Things (IoT) is considered to be the third
wave of information technology after internet and mobile
communications. The Internet of Things concept was formally
proposed in 2005 by the International Telecommunication
Union (ITU) where they published ’ITU Internet Report 2005:
Internet of Things’ [1]. It was noted in this report that all
objects can exchange information via the networks actively.
The IoT is included by the US National Intelligence Council
(NIC) in the list of six Disruptive Civil Technologies with
potential impacts on US national power [2]. NIC foresees that
by 2025 Internet nodes may reside in everyday things e.g. food
packages, furniture, paper documents, and more. It highlights
future opportunities that will arise, starting from the idea that
popular demand combined with technology advances could
drive widespread diffusion of an Internet of Things that could,
like the present Internet, contribute invaluably to economic
development. The possible threats deriving from a widespread
adoption of such a technology are also stressed. Indeed, it is
emphasized that to the extent that everyday objects become
information security risks, the IoT could distribute those risks
far more widely than the Internet has to date.
A. Background
IoT is underpinned by an infrastructure comprising poten-
tially high volumes of connected devices. Machine commu-
nications is a very large market that is growing rapidly with
978-1-5090-0304-4/16/$31.00 ©2016 IEEE
reports stating a compound annual growth rate (CAGR)of well
over 20%. However it is also a fragmented market, with a
diverse range of applications and products. Cisco [3], Analysys
Mason [4], Market Publishers [5], Forrester, McKinsey [6],
BMP Consulting Australia [7], Frost & Sullivan [8], Erics-
son [9], [10] ABI Research [11] and Strategy Analytics [12],
have all produced forward-looking reports for this market
sector with a generally unified forecast of rapid growth and
an ever increasing diversity of IoT applications and services.
Analysys Mason forecast that the fastest-growing M2M sectors
will be utilities and smart grids, healthcare, and security [4]
B. Characterising IoT
The IoT has become a term that encompasses a wide range
of new applications and services built on objects that can
compute and communicate. As a result, it has become a term
that has a degree of fuzziness; it cannot be defined in terms
of a single technology, communication protocol, form factor,
application or service.
Atzori et al. surmise that the reason of today apparent
fuzziness around this term is a consequence of the name
’Internet of Things’ itself, which syntactically is composed
of two terms. The first one pushes towards a network oriented
vision of IoT, while the second one moves the focus on generic
objects to be integrated into a common framework [13].
Perara et al. outline five characteristics of the IoT [14].
These are:
• Intelligence - data generation and transformation into
knowledge
• Architecture - heterogeneous event and time-driven in-
frastructure
• Complex system - granular system of objects each with
different levels of resources
• Size considerations - it is predicted that there will be 50-
100 billion devices connected to the internet by 2020 [15]
• Time considerations - handle billions of parallel and
simultaneous events
• Space considerations - objects can be deployed over wide
geographical areas
• Everything-as-a-service - efficient, scalable, versatile ap-
plications and services
C. Wireless Connectivity
From a technical perspective, IoT now leverages a wide
range of wired and wireless communications technologies and
439
protocols combined with application/service requirements that
range from low bandwidth & high latency to high band-
width/high frequency acquisition. In addition, IoT emcom-
passes nodes that operate over short range e.g. centimeters,
to long range e.g. 30+ km.
Wireline technology examples include Ethernet, optical fi-
bre, Building Automation and Control Networks (BACnet),
Local Operating Network (LONWorks), X10 protocol for
home automation, consumer electronics bus (CEBus). Cellular
communications technologies include General Packet Radio
Service (GPRS), Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution
(EDGE), High Speed Packet Access (HSPA), Long Term
Evolution (LTE), LTE+.
Mesh networking technologies include IEEE 802.15.4 Zig-
bee, ZWave, Flexnet, Wireless Highway Addressable Remote
Transducer Protocol (HART).
Low-power wide-area technologies include SigFox, LoRA,
Adaptrum, WEIGHTLESS, IEEE 802.22, and IEEE 802.15.4g
Powerline carrier technologies include PRIME and G3, and
wireless local/metropolitan area network technologies include
WiFi and WiMAX.
Sub-1 GHz spectrum segments have been proven popular
for new wireless communications services since the transition
from analogue to digital television and subsequent band clear-
ance. Unused available spectrum segments in the UHF/VHF
bands, known as ’television white space’ (TVWS) have been
the subject of over a decade of research. Early theoretical
work involving TVWS has created the foundation for the
development of real-world tests and trials. These are needed to
better understand how the techniques and systems developed
over the past decade could play a useful role in deployed
systems [16], [17]. Somewhat similar trials being carried out
involving TVWS and in some cases, M2M, are currently
underway wordwide.
IoT deployments can leverage a combination of commu-
nications protocols e.g. Message Queuing Telemetry Trans-
port (MQTT) [18]–[20], Constrained Application Protocol
(CoAP) [21], [22] and Thread [23].
In summary, IoT infrastructure now comprises:
• A plethora of communications technologies and protocols
• A myriad of potential applications and services
• Volumes of connected IoT devices on a scale unlike
what we have experienced during previous waves of
information technology.
Vision Mobile predict that the top IoT platforms in 2020
will be cross-vertical. Sector-specific platforms will be niche
or in decline [24]. Therefore to progress to a cross-vertical IoT
approach, a platform that can support the development and
deployment of new IoT applications and services and reduce
the commercialisation complexity yet support the five key IoT
characteristics [14] is required.
II. S URVEY OF T WO LPWA T ECHNOLOGIES
Our focus now shifts to the use of LPWA in an IoT context.
We explore the use of sub-1 GHz low power wide area wireless
communications technologies; specifically, the 868/915 MHz
440
ISM band. Our studies center on SigFox’s ultra-narrow band
(UNB) technology and LoRa developed by Semtech.
A. LoRa based LPWAN
LoRa is a scheme proprietary to Semtech. It is a chirp spread
spectrum (CSS) type modulation, allowing multiple data rates
as both bandwidth and spreading factors are configurable.
LoRa products offer a low power consumption ICs with a
10 µA consumption (25 mA TX, 10 mA RX duty-cycled)
The medium access control (MAC) layer (LoRaWAN) lay-
ing above this proprietary modulation is open source and
is defined by the LoRa Alliance consortium. The so-called
LoRaWAN is a LPWAN offering a fully bidirectional sym-
metrical link between the endpoint and the gateway. The
overall network architecture is described in Fig. 1 where
endpoints communicate with basestations called gateways or
concentrators. Data are then conveyed to a network server
before connecting to end-user applications and servers.
Fig. 1. LoRaWAN E2E Network Architecture
Fig. 1) depicts a LoRa wireless AES-128 encrypted link
from the endpoint to the gateway (GW) and the network server.
The GW is then connected to the internet via a 3G/4G/Ethernet
link to the core network and packets are routed in the cloud
to Network Servers and Application/Client Servers.
LoRaWAN is primarily intended for IoT devices operating
up to ten years on battery power alone in regional, national
or global deployments [25]. The intention of LoRaWAN is
to provide secure bi-directional communication, mobility and
GPS-free localization services. LoRaWAN supports payload
sizes for bidirectional transmissions ranging from 19 bytes
to 250 bytes in compliance with ETSI 169/433/868 MHz
and FCC 915 MHz ISM band regulations. The LoRaWAN
protocol overhead is 12 bytes. Efforts via the LoRa Alliance
are underway in porting the MAC layer to China’s 470 MHz
ISM band. LoRaWAN defines three types of classes operating
in the network and two network types. The first network type
is the ”LoRaWAN Private Network”, which can be operated
by private individuals (e.g for asset tracking, private wireless
sensor networks, and home automation), or companies in
an industrial context for I-IoT (Industrial IoT) and Industry
4.0. The second type of network is the ”LoRaWAN Public
Network” where mobile network operators own the network
infrastructure and offer a network as a server/infrastructure
as a service market offering to their clients. On these two
type of networks, three classes of devices can co-exist. ”Class
A” is a device-initiated scheme, where the device transmits
its payload when it needs to and then offers two reception
windows. The device receive window length ranges from five
to eight symbols to minimise energy usage. The second class,
”Class B”, is where the network offers the possibility to ping
the device at regular slots and provides support for fallback
to ”Class A” in case of battery constraint operation models.
The third class of device is denoted ”Class C”. In this class,
the device acts much like in ”Class A” except that when not
transmitting it is in continuous receive mode.
B. SigFox based LPWAN
SigFox created an ultra-narrowband IoT communications
system designed to support IoT deployments over long ranges
e.g. in excess of 20 km between a client device and a base
station [26]. This company has adopted an operator model;
essentially creating a cellular network for IoT devices. Ultra-
narrow band operation is achieved using channel bandwidths
lower than 1 kHz that transport data payloads of 12 bytes
uplink and 8 bytes dowlink with a protocol overhead of
26 bytes. SigFox have targeted licence-exempt spectrum for
their product, namely the 915 MHz band in the U.S. and
868 MHz band in Europe. SigFox’s model is a cloud-based
approach where data are passed to the backend server and
customer portal directly; users must then implement callbacks
to route the received data to their own systems.
SigFox network offer different engagement models based on
the volume of devices and number of messages transmitted
per day:
• Platinum : 101 to 140 messages + 4 downlink
• Gold : 51 to 100 messages + 2 downlink
• Silver : 3 to 50 messages + 1 downlink
• One : 1 to 2 messages + no downlink
In ITU Region 1, operation in the 868 MHz band is subject
to duty cycle limitations; in this case, the maximum duty cycle
is 10%, which accounts for the maximum of 140 messages/day
for Sigfox’s Platinum offering. The downlink mode only
works as an acknowledgement to an uplink message. The
Sigfox device transmits a message using three frequencies.
Following message transmission on the first frequency, the
device switches to receive mode in order to attempt to receive
a downlink message from the base station. The maximum
downlink receive time-window is 25 seconds. A new uplink
message cannot be dispatched within six seconds following
receipt of a downlink message.
We present a table listing the features of SigFox and LoRa in
Table I extracted from specification datasheets: [27]–[29]. Key
differences include that LoRa was designed from the outset
for both uplink/downlink data whereas SigFox was designed
predominately for downlink only and an uplink option is
available by leveraging a downlink acknowledgement message
to end nodes. This limited uplink functionality supports the
transmission of up to four 8-byte messages to each device per
day. LoRA offers a wider variety of payload sizes e.g. from 19
to 250 bytes whereas SigFox’s uplink payload size is limited to
12 bytes. In addition, SigFox’s technology is proprietary and
LoRaWAN is being further developed via the open, non-profit
LoRa Alliance initiative.

TABLE I
L O R A AND S IG F OX F EATURE TABLE

LPWA Features LoRa (Semtech SX1272) SigFox (AXSEM)

Symmetrical Technology Y Y
Uplink Data Data
Downlink Data + ACK ACK
Payload size 19-250 bytes 12 bytes
Protocol Overhead 12 bytes 26 bytes
TX power 13dBm 14dBm
TX consumption 28mA 45mA
RX consumption 10.5 mA 10 mA
Fig. 2. SigFox E2E Network Architecture Encryption AES-128 E2E AES-128
Open Standard Y N
SigFox relies on several module makers for its endpoints. In Technology CSS/FSK/OOK/GMSK GFSK/BPSK
Sensitivity (dBm) -137 -129
this paper, figures are given for the AXEM AX-Sigfox SoC,
for example for the AX-SigFox SoC, the power consumption
given in the datasheet is: 45 mA TX current and 10 mA RX
current. The SigFox network operates different uplink and III. E XPERIMENTAL A NALYSES
downlink modulation schemes. For downlink, SigFox use a We conducted an experimental evaluation of outdoor range
GFSK scheme operating at 500 bps on a 600 Hz spectrum test estimation for LPWA using the parameters detailed in
segment and BPSK using 100 bps on a 100 Hz channel Table II.
for uplink. Each uplink message is transmitted three times in Fig. 3, we present a coverage map model for the example
on different frequencies to help ensure it will be delivered. case where one LPWA basestation is located on a high site

441
 TABLE II
LPWA COVERAGE ESTIMATION

Parameter Value
TX power 14 dBm
Frequency 868.1 MHz
RX gateway antenna gain 6 dBd
RX antenna polarisation Vertical
RX antenna polar pattern omnidirectional
TX device height above ground 2.5 m
RX sensitivity -138 dB to -123 dB
RX antenna height above sea level 470 m
Terrain model buildings/trees/ground cover incl.

on the eastern seaboard of Ireland. The location, Three Rock

mountain is 450 m above sea level and overlooks the city of
Dublin in Rep. of Ireland. The total coverage area depicted in
this figure is approximately 3, 800km2 . The distance from the
eastern coast of Ireland to the western fringes of the combined Fig. 3. Estimated coverage area using one LPWA basestation on the eastern
seaboard of Ireland [extracted from an overlay image using Google Earth]
coverage area is approximately 90 km. In Fig. 4, we depict the
estimated land area where at least 90% coverage is available
using the single LPWA site; this corresponds to 1380 km2 or
approximately 36% of the total area shown in Fig 3. We can
conclude from this study that potentially wide swathes of land
can be covered by a small number of LPWA basestations.
In addition to our coverage estimation study, our tests
also involved dispatching LPWA signals from a client device
situated in Leixlip, Co. Kildare, Ireland to a basestation 25 km
away and located 757 m above sea level as depicted in Fig. 6.
The experimental setup is depicted in Fig. 5 where a Sigfox
endpoint dispatched payloads to a basestation located 770 m
above sea level at a point-to-point distance of 25 km. Data
from this endpoint are retrieved using Sigfox’s backend web
server. The estimated coverage area, determined using the
same parameters as detailed in Table II with a modification
to account for the antenna height difference (770 m) is shown
in Fig. 7. Fig. 4. Estimated core coverage area where appromimately ¿90% coverage
The received client device transmissions are shown via is available [extracted from an overlay image using Google Earth]
the power spectral density plot presented in Fig. 8. The
received LPWA signals are displayed on the right hand side
operate in the ISM bands (EU 868 MHz / US 915 MHz). Both
of the power spectral density waterfall plot in this case. The
solutions were surveyed in terms of PHY and associated MAC
minimum noise floor was approximately -140 dBm in this
capabilities from an end-to-end system viewpoint. We then
experiment.
proceeded to explore a coverage estimation test case where we
A table of example results regarding the performance of the
found that one LPWA basestation installed 470 m above sea
link is presented in Table III. From this table, we note that the
level on Three Rock mountain in Dublin can potentially serve
received SNR exceeded 20 dB and that the variations in both
a core coverage area of 1380 km2 within a total estimated
SNR and received signal strength indication (RSSI) were low.
area of over 3, 800 km2 . We also conducted a real-world
IV. C ONCLUSIONS range evaluation involving the use of SigFox’s technology
demonstrating successful 25 km test link operation between
We explored the state of the art in industrial solutions a 14 dBm LPWA client test and a basestation. We provided
for LPWA networks and technologies. These networks are example results demonstrating a received SNR consistently
forecasted to capture up to 55% in share of market (SOM) exceeding 20 dB over this test link distance.
with ten year battery powered devices and ranges of tens of
kilometers. In this paper we survey two players in the LPWA ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
market; ultra-narrow band solutions by SigFox and the LoRa We wish to thank 2RN for the help and guidance regarding
spread spectrum technology by Semtech. Both techniques the establishment of the test network used for the experimental

442
Fig. 8. Power spectral density and waterfall plot at a high site basestation showing received LPWA signals originating from our test location 25 km from the
basestation

TABLE III
E XAMPLE STATISTICS REGARDING THE RECEIVED LPWA FRAMES OVER A 25 KM LINK DISTANCE

Time Delay (s) Basestation RSSI (dBm) SNR (dB) Freq (MHz)
09-07-15 13:05:50 1.4 -114.50 23.99 868.2080
09-07-15 13:05:35 1.4 -115.50 23.68 868.2119
09-07-15 13:05:21 1.4 -114.50 21.91 868.1949
09-07-15 13:05:06 1.4 -114.50 23.57 868.1985

Fig. 5. Experimental test set-up. A Sigfox endpoint dispatches payloads to a

basestation located 770 m above sea level at a distance of 25 km. Data from
this endpoint are retrieved using Sigfox’s backend web server

Fig. 7. Estimated coverage area for the high site (Kippure mountain) chosen
for the real-world range evaluation [extracted from an overlay image using
Google Earth]

analyses and development of the coverage range estimation

data

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