IoT Communication Technology: NB-IoT VS eMTC VS LoRa

ByJoe Horner 2019-06-20 2154

In the process of the development of IoT Internet of things industry, the three major communication technologies of NB-IoT, eMTC and LoRa have been gradually formed. Each technology has its own advantages and has unique advantages in its own application scene. IoT is fragmented, which requires compatibility and intercommunication between protocols. Although the three technologies want to compete with each other, NB-IoT, eMTC and LoRa also need to integrate with each other in the future, because the best technologies must be inclusive. Now let's introduce the characteristics of these three technologies.

Characteristics of NB-IoT / eMTC / LoRa technologies

1. NB-IoT

This is a new technology, Chinese called narrowband Internet of things, from the name of the very suitable Internet of things scenario. The advantage in bandwidth and cost is obvious. NB-IoT is built on cellular network, which only consumes about 180KHz bandwidth. UMTS network, LTE network and GSM network can be deployed directly, so it is easy to upgrade the network. At the same time, it supports long standby time, efficient connectivity, and high battery life for networked devices compared to 4G networks.

Advantages of NB-IoT Application scenario

It is precisely because of the low cost and low power consumption of NB-IoT technology, it is widely used in positioning, water meter, parking and other fields. For example, there is a built-in NB-IoT module in the shared bicycle to realize the communication of the Internet of things. Intelligent retail, smart home, intelligent security and smart city are all potential application scenarios in the future.

Although NB-IoT is very good, but the current situation of development in China is the lack of a unified open industrial platform, at the same time, standards, chips, networks and related application layer manufacturers are mainly small and medium-sized enterprises, but also need to strengthen the strength of their own alliance to create a strong ecology. Now, Codoon N3 smart band is the first NB-loT professional sports watch in China.

2. EMTC

Although NB-IoT is very good, but the current situation of development in China is the lack of a unified open industrial platform, at the same time, standards, chips, networks and related application layer manufacturers are mainly small and medium-sized enterprises, but also need to strengthen the strength of their own alliance to create a strong ecology. Now, Codoon N3 smart band is the first NB-loT professional sports watch in China.

EMTC is more suitable for these scenarios

Because of its low frequency and simple protocol, the cost of eMTC chip may be lower than that of NB-IoT chip, and the mobility of eMTC is better than that of NB-IoT, which makes it better than NB-IoT in dynamic Internet of things scenarios. EMTC is widely used in intelligent logistics, JD.com 's unmanned delivery truck has eMTC chip. Now a lot of smart wear products have detection and positioning functions, but also the figure of eMTC technology. In the future, eMTC technology may also be seen in intelligent buses, intelligent elevators and other scenarios.

EMTC and NB-IoT technology to achieve the Internet of things are completely different ideas, eMTC terminal working bandwidth is more than five times higher than NB-IoT terminal, eMTC technology can provide cost-effective terminal communication solution, which is better than the cost advantage of B-IoT technology.

3. LPWAN (LoRa)

Those who are familiar with LPWAN communication technology know that LPWAN communication is a low-power wide-area network, is a wireless network technology that can use low bit rate for long-distance communication. For many low power demand, low bit rate and other scenarios, the Internet of things LPWAN technology is a very good choice.

LPWAN technology can be used to build a private wireless sensing network, which can take advantage of the services and infrastructure provided by third parties, which makes it possible to use public sensors directly, saving a lot of hardware costs, which is very attractive to the network deployment.

The most popular LPWAN technology - LoRa

At present, the most popular LPWAN technology is that LoRa,LoRa has a Chinese name as long-distance radio. One of its major characteristics is that it propagates farther than other wireless modes under the same power consumption, which realizes the unity of low power consumption and long distance, and is a promising communication technology. LoRa network is mainly composed of four parts, they are base station (or gateway), server, LoRa terminal and Internet cloud. LoRa is characterized by two-way data transmission between the application side and the server side.

The advantage of LoRa is ultra-low power consumption and multi-channel data transmission, system data capacity has been increased, gateways and terminal systems can support ranging and positioning, location-sensitive applications are simply tailor-made.

It is reported that Ali has said that in the next five years to connect 10 billion devices. LoRa has obvious advantages in the fields of logistics, health care, intelligent environment, transportation and so on. These are precisely the areas of Alibaba's layout, and it is no wonder that it is necessary to pay a lot of money for the layout.

Sum up

The Internet of things is not only an imaginary scene, it has become a part of our life, people through positioning technology monitoring, through the communication technology network, through the Internet of things to reduce traffic accidents and so on, these can not do without the support of the Internet of things communication technology, NB-IoT, eMTC, LoRa technology, with the development of the Internet of things industry, the three will play a greater role.

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