The Battle of the Internet of Things technology: The battle between Lora and NB-IoT

The most comprehensive science. You must know about NB-IoT

Want a quick and comprehensive understanding of Lora. This is enough for you to read this article.

C114 News September 2 (sub-month) in the history of the development of communication industry, it has been accompanied by the competition and integration of technical standards, such as TDD and FDD, NGN and Ngi,bluetooth and ZigBee. In recent years, the development of the Internet of things in full swing, the world has seen its huge market prospects. In the area of IoT communications, NB-IoT has developed rapidly in recent years, with insiders thinking that NB-IoT will play the role of Lora, Sigfox and other low-power WAN (LPWAN) technology "Terminator".

On this topic, C114 China Communications network interviewed the only technology CTO witnessed, he said, because of NB-IoT propaganda, many people think it will become other low-power wide-area network technology development on the road of "Terminator", and feel afraid, not actually. With the development of NB-IoT, the demand for low-power wide-area networks has been stimulated, and Lora's low-power wide-area network technology is more quickly and more market-aware. Recently, the only company to Lora the largest empty parallel distance test, reached 21.5 kilometers, causing the industry's huge repercussions, customers have increased a lot.

Witnessed that any technology can not fully occupy the market, NB-IoT will play a role in the development of the entire industry, and to some extent, NB-IoT and Lora belong to two camps. Because NB-IoT relies primarily on operator infrastructure for protocol docking, Lora is a more flexible, autonomous network that can be deployed wherever it is needed.

Referring to the market differences between the two, witnessed said that NB-IoT mainly depends on the network coverage, but in many bad conditions, the operator's infrastructure is not fully covered, these blank areas, is the Lora market. In addition, the whole IoT area, fragmentation is very serious, the application of a variety of fields, which has brought many opportunities for the development of Lora. Lora ready to deploy, unlimited geographical, very flexible. NB-IoT and Lora must be co-existent and complement each other. At the same time, NB-IoT is not just competing with Lora, but also competing with other technologies.

NB-IoT is developing rapidly and is expected to be commercially available in 2017

What sparked this technical discussion was the high-speed development of NB-IoT. In recent years, NB-IoT is indeed one of the most popular technical terms in the communications industry. Under the impetus of many communication manufacturers, its development is very rapid. Especially in June 2016, the NB-IoT standard was approved by the International organization 3GPP, and the domestic NB-IoT industry standard is expected to be released by the end of 2017.

Lora Technology has made a breakthrough, foreign operators have deployed backbone network

Lora is a technology specifically designed for radio modulation and Demodulation, released by the company (Semech), which is a more "open" system than Nb-iot,lora.

Witnessed said that the biggest advantage of Lora is low power consumption, easy networking, low cost, transmission distance and so on, can meet the long-time operation, battery power consumption for several years. Lora is suitable for local areas, and can be covered nationwide. At present, there are about millions of IoT nodes worldwide using Lora technology. It is worth mentioning that Lora is well suited for large-scale deployments, such as municipal facilities testing in smart cities or wireless meter reading applications. Lora the cost of implementing the current programme is also lower than NB-IoT. and Lora technology development than NB-IoT early, industrial chain is relatively mature.

Referring to the progress of Lora technology, witnessed said that at present, Lora technology the latest LoRaWAN protocol V1.1 has begun in a small range of trials, especially in the base station roaming, location positioning and other fields have made breakthrough progress. In the industrial chain, Lora Alliance is also growing, in foreign countries such as South Korea Telecom Skt, India Tata Telecom, etc. are beginning to complete the deployment of Lora backbone network in the country.

Sigfox need to pay carrier service charge

In addition to Lora,sigfox is also one of the representative technologies for low Power WAN (LPWAN). Referring to Sigfox, witnessed said that Sigfox's technical route was similar to Lora, but because SIGFOX modules could be obtained from multiple vendors, the reduced cost of hardware after mass production was not a problem. Sigfox wants to be a global IoT operator. They work with operators to  and then transfer the data to the company to which the device belongs. Witnessed introduction, relative Sigfox, although not ruled out in the future there will be more chip vendors, but the current Lora module chip supplier is still a company.

When it comes to the difference between the two technologies, witnessed says the biggest difference between Sigfox and Lora is that Lora can deploy its own private network, and Sigfox will pay for a certain carrier service charge. Therefore, in some special industries, such as oil, transportation, etc., customers may not be willing to pay for this. Sigfox There is great uncertainty and risk in the future, Lora is not the same way. At the heart of the technology is the company, which acquired a French company, Cycleo, which has established the Lora Alliance to develop advanced agreements and is open to members free of charge.