Narrowband Wireless Access for Low-Power Massive Internet of Things: A Bandwidth Perspective

LPWAN is a type of wireless telecommunication network designed to allow long range communications with relaxed requirements on data rate and latency between the core network and a high-volume of battery-operated devices. This article first reviews the leading LPWAN technologies on both unlicensed spectrum (SIGFOX, and LoRa) and licensed spectrum (LTE-M and NB-IoT). Although these technologies differ in many aspects, they do have one thing in common: they all utilize the narrow-band transmission mechanism as a leverage to achieve three fundamental goals, that is, high system capacity, long battery life, and wide coverage. This article introduces an effective bandwidth concept that ties these goals together with the transmission bandwidth, such that these contradicting goals are balanced for best overall system performance.