Application of LoRa and NB-IoT in Ubiquitous Power Internet of Things: A Case Study of Fault Indicator in Electricity Distribution Network

Traditional communication technologies based on 2G and 4G cannot meet the requirements of low-power wide-area data transmission in electricity distribution network. Ubiquitous power Internet of things (UPIoT) has thus been proposed by the State Grid of China and it can be used to transmit energy information requested from any location. Narrowband Internet of things (NB-IoT) and LoRa are two promising low-power wide-area communication technologies, which are capable of providing good performance to transmit data collected from the devices installed in the distribution network. In this paper, taking the fault indicator as an example, we combine LoRa and NB-IoT to construct a wireless network to transmit the operation status of fault indicator, which can improve the transmission distance and reduce the operating cost of the system. It adopts a communication mode including a master node and a plurality of child nodes to meet the needs of large-scale information monitoring. Among them, the design of the master node uses NB-IoT and LoRa communication technologies. The design of the child node uses LoRa communication technology and sensor technology. The control chip STM32F103C8T6 is used for data transmission, and the data is finally managed by a centralized means through upper computer software.