LPWAN - Fundamentals of IoT (Part 1)

A low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) or low-power wide-area (LPWA) network or low-power network (LPN) is a type of wireless telecommunication wide area network designed to allow long range communications at a low bit rate among things (connected objects), such as sensors operated on a battery.

LPWAN offers multi-year battery lifetime and is designed for sensors and applications that need to send small amounts of data over long distances a few times per hour from varying environments.

LoRa and LoraWAN belong to the category of non-cellular LPWAN wireless communication network protocols and players, operating in the license-free spectrum. Other technologies that operate in the license-free frequency bands include Sigfox, Ingenu and several more.

A complete list of Wireless IoT protocols may be found here.

• https://www.link-labs.com/blog/complete-list-iot-network-protocols
• https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Regional-Presence/AsiaPacific/SiteAssets/Pages/Events/2016/Dec-2016-IoT/IoTtraining/IoT%20network%20planning%20ST%2015122016.pdf

While LoRA, LoRaWAN operates on open licensed-free spectrums, others may operate on licensed frequencies. Accordingly, LPWANs may often be classified as licensed and licensed-free LPWAN ecosystems.

LoRa and Sigfox fall under non-cellular IoT technologies. NB-IoT (NarrowBand IoT) falls under cellular IoT category, and transmits over cellular frequency .

• http://www.rfwireless-world.com/Terminology/NB-IoT-vs-LoRa-vs-SigFox.html

Note: It is possible for LoRa(or any LP WAN device) to transmit over large distances with low power, since the laws of physics dictate, that in order to transmit over a large distance; you either need to increase the power, or reduce the bandwidth. Since LoRa embedded sensors transmit over large distances, but use low power (batteries), its bandwidth is greatly limited.

Source:Internet