Competition in the field of Internet of things will be because of the rise of low-power wan (LPWA) and reshuffle, and telecom manufacturers, various equipment manufacturers and chip manufacturers are rubbing their hands to play...

Competition in the field of Internet of things (IoT) due to low power wan (low power, wide area, LPWA) and reshuffle, the rise of the telecom manufacturers, various equipment manufacturers and chip manufacturers are rubbing their hands to play.

Including, for example, Orange (former France Telecom), several telecommunication service vendors, is preparing to launch the use of unlicensed 800 ~ 900 MHZ band LoRa specifications of things; Many other telecom manufacturers are expected in the next year to new development, by 3 GPP LTE based emerging narrowband cellular standards are the Internet of things.

At the same time, the pioneer in the field of LPWA Sigfox is prepared in the global launch its own 800 ~ 900 MHZ service; There are several other manufacturers such as Ingenu, trying to deploy a similar network are or will be technology to other manufacturers. And Cisco Systems have been added to LoRa camp, as the specification provides the gateway; LoRa and Sigfox draws from chip makers such as Microchip, ST and TI, etc.

Telecoms firms TMobile network technology and strategy, vice President of Karri Kuoppanaki said the existing ISM frequency band and the performance characteristics of emerging cellular technology: "it seems will roughly in the same arena, and usually standardized solution will win out;" The company has a iot customers to use the existing GSM network, but haven't decided what technology is adopted in the future.

"Different operating chamber of commerce has a different business model and the demand, if they are deployed technology such as Sigfox, how to progress to the 3 GPP services remains to be seen;" Kuoppanaki said the scheme would more easily with the existing narrowband LTE cellular network integration, rather than from third party vendors new wireless technology, and the former will have both the economic scale of global demand.

But Orange's San Francisco office business analyst Jameson Buffmire said narrowband LTE standard of alternative technologies to meet the unauthorized frequency under $5 chip cost, also won't be the best use of valuable authorized spectrum method; , he points out, because the Sigfox have scale, rapid deployment, market interest in the LPWA network is more and more strong: "operators realize that not all things can be shoehorned into the data in more than $10 a month."

And Buffmire pointed out that because of the high operating are focusing on to average revenue per user (average revenue per user), narrowband LTE could lead to the manufacturer one another; And he did not think of cellular industry can be ready to respond to the wide-area iot application within five years. Orange before choosing LoRa assessment for more than six kinds of LPWA network; The company plans in France are a national network, has so far in 17 cities including San Francisco, deployment of the network and gateway.

"LoRa is adaptive (self adapting), we don't have to do a field investigation, because the gateway can adapt to the distance... its costs less than one over ten of the cellular network deployment, therefore enough to cover the entire country;" Buffmire said: "we will be the first to deploy in France national network, and to seek other opportunities later;" He points out, LoRa sensor network is one of the first application of swimming pool, is responsible for the detection of chlorine concentration standards, and cellular network is not very suitable for this application.

Sigfox: the Internet of things need new operators

Work closely with chip manufacturers SigFox American marketing director, said Luke D 'Arcy, Internet of things need a operators with focus on its unique application technology; He points out that the existing cellular network operator's competition is depends on who makes the iPhone the fastest download video, but Sigfox is probably the world's most slow network, but the locked target is the requirement of low cost and don't care about the bandwidth low-order iot node, a day at most similar SMS text messages sent ten times.

SigFox network now covers the 10 U.S. cities, as well as in most cities in France, Spain, and other European countries; Sigfox D 'Arcy points out, is the ideal of irrigation and water conservancy monitoring, forest fire monitoring, can be applied to the deployed cellular network is not reasonable.

"We focused on the low order application," he said, the narrowband LTE itself to support the firmware update feature, you need a minimum of 60 ~ 100 Kbits/second speed: "I am sure that once the technology into the standardization, the data transmission rate demand will be much higher than Sigfox." He also pointed out that, through the base station to change filter, Sigfox is especially suitable for noisy American 900 MHZ band.

Sigfox, moreover, USES the ultra narrow frequency transceiver, can also spread spectrum methods of broadband receiver than competition, as the booming of Internet provide a better capacity: "we listen to each channel is 100 hz 200 KHZ range, so can listen to thousands of information at the same time."

D 'Arcy, points out that at present On Semiconductor and Microchip's Atmel offer to integrated transceiver with micro-controller Sigfox reference design; TI with Silicon Labs, such as the manufacturer, will be launched later this year to support bluetooth, Zigbee, Sigfox integrated chip samples with Thread.

To those Internet business opportunities, Cisco Systems, joined the LoRa camp, and with a service from the Dubai (Dubai) manufacturers to jointly develop support base stations of the technology; The company product line manager, Felix, Davis said LoRa was chosen because it is have real user technology, ecosystem, and its openness, and they look good applications include networking intelligent electric meter, the parking lot, or even a trash can.

And Davis argues that in the end not only a kind of communication technology covers all Internet use situation, Internet of things will be all kinds of network technology such as LoRa, wi-fi, honeycomb, DRSC... Such as mixing, all technologies in bandwidth, delay, weigh the costs and coverage, etc.