A whole class of devices needs to send a few bytes, a few times a day, over kilometres, for years on one battery. That is the LPWAN trade: give up data rate, win range and battery life. LoRa and Sigfox do it without a cellular network; NB-IoT and LTE-M do it with one.
Most wireless design chases throughput. Low-power wide-area networking chases the opposite corner: the longest range and the longest battery life, for the smallest amount of data. A soil sensor, a water meter, an asset tag sends a handful of bytes occasionally and must last years on a cell. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth cannot reach far enough; full cellular costs too much power and money. LPWAN fills that gap.
The way it buys range is physics: narrow the bandwidth or spread the signal so each bit carries more energy and sits further below the noise, and the receiver can still dig it out. That is why LPWAN links reach kilometres where a Wi-Fi link reaches tens of metres — and why they carry kilobits, not megabits.
LoRa uses chirp spread spectrum: each symbol is a frequency sweep (a chirp), which is extremely robust to noise, interference and Doppler and gives a large processing gain. LoRaWAN is the network layer on top, with a star-of-stars architecture — devices broadcast to any gateway in range, and a network server deduplicates. It runs in unlicensed sub-GHz, so anyone can build a network, from a single gateway to a national one.
Sigfox takes ultra-narrowband: squeeze the signal into a tiny slice of spectrum so almost no noise competes with it, and send a very small message very slowly. It reaches even further but carries only a hundred or so bytes a day, over an operator-run network. Both keep the device dumb, cheap and asleep most of the time — the intelligence is in the gateway and the server.
The cellular world answers the same need with NB-IoT and LTE-M. NB-IoT is the closest to LoRa/Sigfox in spirit — very low rate, deep coverage, long battery — but it runs in licensed spectrum on an operator's network, which brings guaranteed quality of service and global roaming at the cost of a subscription and operator dependence. LTE-M adds more throughput, mobility and voice for things like trackers and wearables.
The real decision is ownership and economics, not just radio. LoRa lets you build and own a private network with no operator; Sigfox and the cellular options mean subscribing to someone else's. Coverage, data volume, battery target, mobility and whether you want to run your own infrastructure all push the choice — and many deployments mix them.
For a device, LPWAN is a power-budget problem before it is a radio problem: the modem spends almost all its life asleep, waking for milliseconds to transmit, so the system design around duty cycle, energy storage and wake scheduling decides whether it hits the battery target. The link budget — antenna, sensitivity, and the spreading or narrowbanding that buys range — decides the coverage.
We treat an LPWAN device as that whole system: the modem and RF front end, the ultra-low-power MCU and sleep architecture, the antenna and link budget for the range you need, and the choice between LoRa, Sigfox or cellular against your coverage, data and ownership constraints.
Low-power wide-area networking: a class of wireless technologies that send small amounts of data over kilometres at very low power, so a device can run for years on a battery. It trades data rate for range and battery life, filling the gap between short-range radios and full cellular.
LoRa uses chirp spread spectrum (each symbol is a frequency sweep) for robust, kilometre-scale links and is built into private or public LoRaWAN networks. Sigfox uses ultra-narrowband, squeezing a tiny slow message into a sliver of spectrum for even longer range but very low data volume, over an operator network.
LoRa and Sigfox are non-cellular and run in unlicensed sub-GHz, so you can own the network. NB-IoT and LTE-M are cellular, in licensed spectrum on an operator's network, giving guaranteed quality of service and roaming at the cost of a subscription. They serve the same low-rate, long-range, low-power need.
Typically 2 to 15 km for LoRa and up to tens of kilometres for Sigfox in good conditions, versus tens of metres for Wi-Fi. The range comes from spreading or narrowbanding the signal so each bit carries more energy and can be recovered from below the noise.
Because it keeps the device simple and low-power: an end device just broadcasts to whatever gateway is in range and then sleeps, with no need to route or relay. The network server behind the gateways handles deduplication and scheduling. The intelligence sits in the infrastructure, not the device.
Use LoRa when you want to own a private network with no operator and no subscription, in unlicensed spectrum. Use NB-IoT or LTE-M when you need guaranteed coverage, quality of service and roaming and are willing to depend on an operator. Battery target, data volume, mobility and infrastructure ownership drive the choice.
The full connectivity map.
KNOWLEDGEWhy LPWAN is a star.
KNOWLEDGEThe power budget.
KNOWLEDGENB-IoT in the field.
KNOWLEDGEA non-cellular 5G mesh.
KNOWLEDGEWhere LPWAN fits.
The sleep architecture, the link budget and the choice between LoRa, Sigfox and cellular against your coverage and ownership constraints are the real work. Tell us the data and the battery life.