Low-Power Wide Area Networks for IoT: Challenges, Performance and Future Trends

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) has changed connectivity forever, opening the 
door for countless devices to talk and exchange information across great 
distances. At the heart of this technological transformation lies a crucial 
innovation: Low Power Wide Area Networks (LPWAN). They have taken shape 
as game changers, solving the requirements of the IoT by providing long 
range communication with small power consumption to its applications. 
IoT deployments continue to explode across many sectors, such as smart 
cities, agriculture, and industrial monitoring, all of which rely on efficient 
and scalable connectivity solutions more than ever. Enter LPWANs, which 
f
 ill the gap and offer a reliable basis for massively connecting many low 
power devices spread out over large geographical space. In this article, we 
look at the world of LPWANs, their performance characteristics, discuss the 
challenges they face and gape at the crystal ball to see the future. We’ll take 
a look at how these networks are changing the IoT, and how they’re preparing 
the landscape for exciting new applications that were, until recently, thought 
to be impossible.