​If you have to ask when LPWAN entered the public eye, this time point is probably 2016.

At that time, Sigfox, a startup company born on the outskirts of Toulouse, France, broke into people's field of vision with an ambitious plan to build a global network dedicated to the Internet of Things alongside LTE networks.  In the past few years, there have been many attempts to enter the Chinese market, but they have not been successful.

During the same period, Ingenu, an American company that seemed to have superior technology, a strong team, rich development experience and a complete enterprise chain at the time, planned to seize the LPWAN market in China with its RPMA technology, and planned to Based in Wuxi, expand the IoT infrastructure to the whole of China.  After struggling for some years, it finally did not stir up more splashes in the domestic market.

In addition, 6 years ago, Symphony Link, Weightless-N, Weightless-W, Weightless-P, NWave, Telensa, Platanus, Cynet and other technologies also came into view from time to time.  However, these technologies failed to leave impressive results in the Chinese market after all.

The hard-hitting LPWAN rivers and lakes

Flowing non-cellular IoT connectivity technology?

In the arena of LPWAN, we are accustomed to dividing the technologies into cellular technologies and non-cellular technologies.

To some extent, the development of cellular LPWAN technology is relatively clear. Once, NB-IoT and eMTC were regarded as two very important growth poles in the Chinese LPWAN market. However, after several years of development, operators have reversed the direction of development and abandoned the development of eMTC. In the end, eMTC lost the possibility of development in the domestic market. Of course, while developing NB-IoT, we are also vigorously developing LTE Cat.1 to meet some market demands.

When it comes to non-cellular technologies, these technologies can largely solve the problem of large-scale and wide-coverage network connections for IoT applications, make up for the shortcomings of traditional cellular technologies, and further promote the application and large-scale deployment of IoT. . 

After years of observation, this part of the market has relatively large changes. As mentioned above, some technologies have been eliminated by the market due to their lack of fit with market development, and some technologies, such as LoRa, ZETA, ADC, and interBow, have been developing positively. The vertical fields and industrial ecology are gradually expanding. Of course, there are also new technologies spawned by market demand, such as WIoTa, TPUNB, ChirpIoT™, TurMass™, LaKi.

One sentence (paragraph) to understand the top ten non-cellular low-power long-distance communication technologies

In the non-cellular low-power long-distance IoT technology market, perhaps because the "old technology" market continues to mature, everyone is immersed in doing practical things, while the "new technology" is still in the early stages of development, and is expanding its market awareness. in the process. As a bystander of the non-cellular low-power long-distance IoT industry, I have a personal feeling that the industry's enthusiasm for this type of technology seems to have receded slightly in the past year.

But is this really the case? Perhaps we need to deeply understand the whole picture of the development of this industry before we can draw conclusions. Before that, perhaps we can first understand these new and old technologies through a sentence (paragraph):

LoRa: After several years of development, LoRa technology has established its position in the field of low-power and long-distance Internet of Things technology, and has been recognized by the industry at the communication level. From the perspective of the global market, the development of LoRa in overseas markets is gradually rising, and the market focus tends to shift. From the perspective of the industry chain, companies in the industry chain continue to strengthen their entire industry chain layout, and the division of labor in the industry is no longer so clear. A LoRa company can assume multiple roles at the same time and provide a variety of products and services. From the perspective of application fields, innovative applications continue to emerge, and the initial low-value service model focusing on things has expanded to high-value services centered on human needs, and then gradually infiltrated into things.

ZETA: Based on ZETA technology power consumption, cost and other aspects that are highly compatible with the needs of supply chain logistics, low-value asset management and other industries, ZETA has been recognized by the market. Especially in terms of logistics visualization tracking, such as the large-ticket and LTL market, ZETA's business has a lot of room for expansion. At present, in the fields of energy, smart city, water conservancy and industry, power grid and other fields, ZETA's wide area networking is also a good domestic alternative.

WIoTa: WIoTa is a communication protocol optimized for wide-area wireless IoT communication. Its core is to provide in-depth optimization for large coverage, low power consumption, a large number of connections, and low-cost applications. At present, the application scenarios of WIoTa To B direction include smart farming, smart metering, smart agriculture, smart energy, environmental monitoring, industrial Internet of Things DTU, etc.; To C direction includes smart home, smart wear, voice intercom, etc.

• TPUNB: TPUNB is a set of domestic wireless narrowband IoT communication system, which has a full-stack communication system from physical layer to application layer for IoT application scenarios. The IoT perception system based on TPUNB's new metropolitan IoT private network can connect to a large number of ecological perception terminals, and is widely used in smart cities, digital villages, industrial IoT and other fields to boost the digital empowerment of various industries.
• ChirpIoT™: ChirpIoT™ technology is a wireless communication technology that optimizes and improves linear spread spectrum signals to achieve long-distance transmission. Based on practical application requirements, it can be widely used in fields and industries such as smart agriculture, smart industry, public utilities, smart cities, smart communities, and modern logistics.
• TurMass™: TurMass™ is a low-power long-distance transmission technology and networking system. It is a large-capacity narrowband transmission technology based on large-scale antennas. At present, pilot applications are mainly carried out in several application fields such as smart lighting, smart fire protection, smart construction sites, smart mines, industrial IoT and satellite IoT. In addition, TurMass™ can also be used in the digital walkie-talkie industry.
• LaKi: LaKi focuses on solving the problem of low-cost and large-scale coverage of the last mile of the Internet of Things, including the complete wireless communication technology of the protocol layer LaKiplus and the physical layer RF SoC chip. Laki is suitable for large-scale deployment of high-density terminals and IoT application scenarios that require high response speed and power consumption, such as remote control, real-time inventory, indoor positioning, P2P voice, etc.
• ADC: ADC protocol is a decentralized ad hoc network protocol based on ant colony algorithm. At present, the ADC protocol and related products have been implemented in local area network scenarios such as smart homes, smart hotels, smart elderly care, and smart buildings.
• interBow: interBow has the characteristics of low power consumption, long distance, wide range and strong penetrating power. interBow has ultra-high industry-specific precision in the cold chain transportation industry, mainly focusing on 4 vertical application fields such as smart vaccine cold chain, hospital Internet of Things, pharmaceutical supply chain and GSP verification, and food cold chain.
• Sigfox: Although it is not in Jianghu, Jianghu still has its legends. The reason why Sigfox fell into the dilemma of "opening high and going low" is mainly related to its own operations and strategies, especially its adherence to the way of network construction and operation.