Technical comparison of NB-IoT and LoRa

In the field of low-power wide-area Internet of Things, the industry mainly focuses on NB-IoT and LoRa technologies, supporting the interconnection of various industries and creating innovative services such as smart meters and shared air conditioners.

In the past few days, the article "Reading the status, challenges and prospects of NB-IoT" and "LoRa in the Internet of Things" is what a ghost? The characteristics and development status of NB-IoT and LoRa technologies are summarized respectively. Industry insiders often compare the two technologies, and the discussion about which technology is more suitable for the development of the domestic market is also continuing. For the vertical industry enterprises that want to build the Internet of Things, how to choose two technologies, this article tries to come Find the answer.

Development status of LoRa and NB-IoT

With the rapid development in recent years, LoRa and NB-IoT have made great progress in wide coverage. NB-IoT has already completed coverage of more than 300 cities across the country, and the number of terminal connections has exceeded 50 million. It is increased by tens of millions of grades every year, covering industries including smart cities, environmental protection, agriculture, medical care, and logistics.

LoRa is also blooming more in the country. LoRa, a technology that emerged earlier than NB-IoT, is also receiving attention from some vertical industry markets. At the same time, some Internet companies have chosen to promote the development of LoRa technology, with the intention of using LoRa technology to open up new roads for IoT.

Nowadays, both sides need to find new growth scenarios, and the smart home and industrial Internet markets are in the ascendant. Whether the market's future development breadth or depth is worthy of development of various technologies. Therefore, who can occupy the market leading position, be able to obtain more support from the industry chain, and form a more complete ecosystem, will be able to achieve greater success in the future.

LoRa and NB-IoT, both of which are wide-area Internet of Things technologies, have inherent advantages in such short-distance coverage scenarios, covering a wide area, low power consumption, a powerful management platform, a rich variety of terminals, and a large number of industrial chains. Downstream support.

The IHS Markit report pointed out that the LPWAN market segment, which was once widely open, began to shrink significantly, but it is still in its early stages of development. In 2018, only 150 million LPWAN links were deployed. By 2023, LoRa and NB-IoT are expected to occupy 86% of all LPWAN links. LoRa may gain more private network adoption, while NB-IoT is mainly used. Applied to public networks.

NB-IoT features

NB-IoT has obvious advantages in bandwidth and cost. It is built on a cellular network and consumes only about 180KHz of bandwidth. It can directly deploy UMTS network, LTE network and GSM network, and it is easy to upgrade the network. At the same time, compared to 4G networks, it supports long standby times, efficient connections, and high battery life of networked devices.

Advantages of NB-IoT Application scenario: Because NB-IoT technology has low cost and low power consumption, it is widely used in positioning, water meter and parking. For example, there are built-in NB-IoT modules in shared bicycles. Networked communication.

More importantly, NB-IoT back-to-back operators have a natural advantage for indoor scene coverage. The identified spectrum resources can be covered by the operator's original room division system, and the NB-IoT device can be pushed into the user's home through a fusion package and a device experience. Widely used in industries such as smart homes, smart retail and smart cities.

Although NB-IoT has obvious advantages, its development status in China lacks a unified open industry platform. At the same time, standards, chips, networks and related application layer vendors are mainly small and medium-sized enterprises. They also need to strengthen their own alliances and build strong ones. Ecology.

LoRa features

At present, the development of NB-IoT technology is in full swing due to the popularity of national policies, telecom operators and industry players. In contrast, LoRa technology, which had been quiet for a long time due to band licensing issues, has a lot of low-key.

However, with the cooperation between Alibaba and China Tower, and the news that Tencent and other Internet giants announced their participation in the LoRa Alliance, they have injected a “cardiotonic agent” into the industry, and LoRa technology will usher in another spring in China.

One of the characteristics of LoRa is that it is farther away from other wireless methods under the same power consumption, achieving low power consumption and long-distance uniformity. The LoRa network is mainly composed of base stations (also gateways), servers, LoRa terminals and objects. The networked cloud consists of four parts, which are characterized by two-way delivery of data between the application side and the server side.

LoRa's strengths are ultra-low power and multi-channel data transmission, increasing system data capacity, and gateway and end systems support ranging and positioning, making it ideal for location-sensitive applications.

LoRa has the support of Ali, Tencent, Google, etc., and can directly get the ecological support around these head Internet players.

It is foreseeable that in the future indoor scenes, NB-IoT and LoRa will undoubtedly rely on their own ecology for long-term battles.

NB-IoT and LoRa comparison

(1) Frequency band, cost, quality of service

NB-IOT and cellular communication use the licensed frequency band provided by the operator. Because it is a specially allocated frequency band, the interference is relatively small. Although the actual application will charge a certain communication fee, the corresponding will provide better. Signal service quality, security and certification. Moreover, the completion of the current cellular network base station is more conducive to rapid large-scale application.

LoRa works in the unlicensed frequency band of Sub-1G. It can establish network equipment without application. Relatively speaking, the network architecture is simple, and there is no need to pay extra communication fees in practical applications. However, because it is an open frequency band, the practical application is very extensive and easy. Interference from other devices in the same frequency band.

(2) Communication distance

NB-IOT signal coverage depends on its base station density and link budget. With the previous resource advantages, it can achieve wider coverage and better QoS than LoRa, and NB-IoT itself has a link budget of up to 164dB. Its transmission distance can reach 15km～20km.

LoRa uses linear frequency modulation spread spectrum modulation technology, which not only maintains the low power consumption characteristics like FSK (Frequency Shift Keying), but also significantly increases the communication transmission distance, thereby improving network efficiency and anti-interference ability, that is, different spreading sequences. When the terminals transmit simultaneously using the same frequency, they will not interfere with each other. Based on this, the gateway developed by the terminal can realize multi-channel parallel data reception and greatly expand the network capacity. The transmission distance of the LoRa node can reach 12-15 km coverage (the open suburban environment, the urban environmental transmission distance will decrease). 

(3) Low power consumption and battery life

Low power consumption is one of the core indicators of the Internet of Things. There are two important factors to consider the protocol content and node current consumption in terms of battery life.

The nodes of the NB-IOT synchronization protocol must be networked periodically. The required "peak current" is several orders of magnitude higher than that of LoRa with nonlinear modulation. Especially in the process of requesting the base station to access the server after waking up, there will be A large amount of battery power consumption.

LoRa is an asynchronous communication method based on the ALOHA protocol, so it can accurately set the sleep time according to the specific application requirements, so as to fully utilize the battery power.

(4) Equipment cost

For the terminal node, LoRa is simpler and easier to develop than NB-IOT. The protocol and modulation mechanism of NB-IOT is more complicated, requiring more complicated circuit design and more cost. At the same time, NB-IOT adopts licensed frequency band. Communication requires a fee.

Through the above analysis, the biggest difference between LoRa and NB-IoT is that NB-IoT works in the cellular licensed band, and the network is deployed and maintained by the operator. In order to ensure normal communication and work with the base station, it is necessary to The product is effectively validated before it is actually deployed.

While LoRa is a non-cellular network, the non-disclosure of its standard details makes it difficult to generate standard signals for verification. LoRa can be carried out using traditional signal towers, industrial base stations and even portable home gateways. Building base stations and home gateways is cheap. In terms of cost, the cost of LoRa wireless module and NB-IoT wireless module is not much different, but in the hidden form, NB-IoT is obviously higher than LoRa wireless module.

Both NB-IoT and LoRa are still in the initial stages of development and require input and common development. When large-scale deployments are possible, the cost of modules for NB-IoT and LoRa will be further reduced. As far as the technical solution is concerned, in a short period of time, NB-IoT and LoRa will definitely be in parallel. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages. It is difficult to say who is overwhelming. However, if it is affected by factors other than technical solutions, such as the innovation of profit model. With the close integration with the application industry, with the influence of the industry, both of them may take the lead in occupying the market.

In short, in the new wave of the development of the Internet of Things, the project will be first landed, and there will be an opportunity to win one step ahead. NB-IoT and LoRa not only need product innovation, but also innovation in project applications.

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