Evaluating the Potential and Challenges of LPWAN Technologies like LoRa and Sigfox for Long-range Communication in IoT Systems

In this paper, we consider the performance of two Low Power Wide Area Network technologies, namely LoRa and Sigfox, placing special emphasis on the possibility of efficiently coping with massive numbers of devices in IoT settings with high densities. Finally, we apply MATLAB simulation for evaluating all mentioned performance figures: power consumption, data throughput, latency, and network congestion for various network loads. LoRa has advantages in terms of high data throughput and range but has the disadvantage of high power consumption and latency in a highly populated urban environment. Sigfox is beneficial for low-power, low-data-rate applications - providing long battery life but with strict data throughput and increased latency. LoRa has a much higher latency, which is the time taken for a packet to travel from the sender to the receiver, as it is prone to congestion and interference in dense IoT setups compared to Wi-Fi. Furthermore, the performance of both technologies shows different inefficiencies as the node density increases. We discuss the pros and cons of these technologies followed by the implementation guidelines for smart cities and industrial automation. The technology choice of LPWAN will depend upon the type of applications and requirements in terms of data size, latency, and power consumption.