Comparison of Performance and Power Consumption Between GPS and Sigfox Positioning Using Pycom Modules

Sammanfattning: Sigfox is one of the newly-emerging LPWAN (Low Power Wide Area Network) technologies aiming to provide power-efficient solutions to the world of IoT. This study presents a comparison between Sigfox Geolocation and GPS (Global Positioning System) in terms of power consumption and performance which includes three metrics: accuracy and precision, response rate and response time. This study includes for the first part a series of lab tests where Sigfox Geolocation and GPS were studied in a single Sleep, Wake up, Idle, Tx/Rx cycle. For the second part, field tests with different geographical parameters (altitude, population, mobility) were conducted. Results of lab tests show that power consumption difference between Sigfox and GPS is a linear function of Idle time. In field tests, GPS presents a far superior performance than Sigfox in all metrics and marginally better power efficiency for relatively short Idle interval. For both GPS and Sigfox, a correlation between power efficiency and performance was observed. Results show that GPS operates best in rural environments while Sigfox stands out in urban ones. Payload size was observed to affect Sigfox in both power consumption and performance while different transmission rates only affect power consumption but do not seem to impact the other metrics. A solution based on the outcome of this study is suggested for a freight-monitoring system where geolocation is handled by GPS and the coordinates transmitted via Sigfox. As an emerging technology under constant development, Sigfox Geolocation is expected to have improved performance in the near future.