23th February 2018

Selection of radio technology for IoT solution is a tough decision and must be taken up wisely. It all comes down to four basic factors:
1. Cost of module
2. Cost of transmission
3. Data type
4. Energy consumption
IoT Engineers usually pick one of the popular radio technologies or propose hybrid solutions, which are most cost efficient.
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Radio technologies review

Bluetooth Low Energy |
LTE |
LoRa |
Sigfox |
|
---|---|---|---|---|
Business summary | Small range solution which allows to transmit audio-video signal. No cost for communication | Long range solution, with high data band. High connectivity cost and high module cost | Big range solution with low module cost, no transmission cost and data rate fitting majority of IoT solutions | Low-cost solution for obtaining simple data from units in wider area (like gps location, temperature, etc.) For sending small, infrequent chunks of data in one direction |
Sample Use Cases | Monitoring of machines in a small part of facility (complex sensor data, even audio-video) | Real life remote audio-video streaming. Sending multiple sensor data with high frequency. | Monitoring of machines – multiple sensor data in large facilities or in wide rural area (power consumption, temperature, etc.) |
Single Sensor monitoring single in very wide areas, Monitoring temperature in numerous locations |
Technical | ||||
Range | 50-150m Better range if Bluetooth 5 is used |
35km max for GSM | 2-5km (urban environment), 15km (suburban environment) | 30-50km (rural environments), 3-10km (urban environments) |
Data rate – content | Voice, pictures, low quality video, text data | Voice, pictures, high quality video, text data | Short text data | Short text data |
Data rate – values | 1Mbps (Smart/BLE) Better data rate if Bluetooth 5 is used |
35-170kps (GPRS), 120-384kbps (EDGE), 384Kbps-2Mbps (UMTS), 600kbps-10Mbps (HSPA), 3-10Mbps (LTE) – video streaming in high quality |
0.3-50 kbps. | 140 message per hour, 1message=12Bytes |
Costs1 | ||||
Cost of connectivity1 | Free | 3-5$/unit/month – strongly depends on the country | Private – Free Public (LoRaWAN)- small number of operators – pricing offer often do not exist yet |
<1$???/month for multiple units |
Cost of infrastruture1 | No cost | No cost | LoRa P2P has no infrastructure cost For LoraWAN operators single gateway cost is 230-1200 EUR | No cost |
Cost of module | 5-30$ | 30-50$ | 9-12$ | 5-10$ |
Power consumption [mW] | 10–500 | 5000 | 100 | 50 |
Security | ||||
Data Security | Secure | Secure | Secure – Messages are visible for everyone, but content may be secured(encrypted) | Secure |
Jamming Security – cost of jamming | 500$ to jam 15m radius | 650$ to jam a single gateway | 30EUR7 | No data |
Connectivity in motion (for example in cars) | Possible | Possible | Possible | Moderate efficiency8 |
Other | ||||
Geographical constraints | Global availability, licence free radio frequency ranges | GSM network is has high coverage in majority of the countries, GSM frequencies are licensed | USA, EU and China have different frequency usage for LoRa. In India LoRa is partially in licensed frequencies | Limited Coverage around the globe. See this link4 |
Hybrid solutions are most cost efficient
Most common IoT scenarois – multiple sensor data collected by multiple units spread around one facility or small area can be easily optimised in terms of cost by making hybrid solutions
1. LTE Gateway + LoRa
2 . LTE Gateway + Bluetooth
3. Land line/WiFi + LoRa
4. Land line/WiFi + Bluetooth

Sources:
www.link-labs.com/blog/costs-in-iot-lte-m-vs.-nb-iot-vs.-sigfox-vs.-lora
www.link-labs.com/blog/sigfox-vs-lora
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth
docs.mbed.com/docs/lora-with-mbed/en/latest/intro-to-lora
www.sigfox.com/en/coverage
www.rfsafe.com/study-shows-30-mins-exposure-4g-lte-cell-phone-radiation-alters-brain-activity
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Bluetooth_Low_Energy
lirias.kuleuven.be/bitstream/ 123456789/587540/1/ camera_ready.pdf
iot-daily.com/2015/03/13/sigfox-pros-and-cons
niviuk.free.fr/lte_band.php
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DASH7
See also:
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Paweł Skiba
IoT Solution Architect