Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) Technologies for Industrial IoT Applications

Sammanfattning: Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is part of the well-known IoT concept where a large number of devices need to be interconnected in order to collect and exchange data. Companies’ aim is not only to minimize cost during product design, operation and maintenance but also to enable remote monitoring on the efficiency of the devices-assets through the utilization of cloud services. Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) is seen as one of the enablers for IoT and can be realized by implementing emerging technologies such as Sigfox, LoRaWAN, NB-IoT and CAT-M1. The aim of this thesis is to define which technology is the most suitable for a vast range of applications. In the second and third chapters, an in-depth analysis and theoretical comparison of these technologies regarding frequency bands, data rate, power consumption, coverage, quality of service, latency, mobility, and cost is provided. However, based on this comparison, it is apparent that there is not a single technology that can satisfy all different requirements and needs. Therefore, applications such as smart metering, network monitoring, manufacturing, supply chain tracking, agriculture or power generator monitoring can take advantage of some technologies more than others and this is shown in the third chapter. As far as the practical part of this thesis project is concerned, we chose to test Sigfox in the area of Skåne for reasons that are explained in the fourth chapter. Using Lopy4, a module provided by Pycom, we performed field measurements in outdoor, indoor, rural and urban scenarios. Results concerning coverage, outage capacity, range, and latency are extracted in the fourth chapter and further commented in the fifth chapter. Finally, in the sixth chapter, future work suggestions and insights are given by the authors.