0% found this document useful (0 votes)
100 views5 pages

Coverage and Capacity Analysis of Sigfox - Lora - Nbiot

Abstract—In this paper the coverage and capacity of SigFox, LoRa, GPRS, and NB-IoT is compared using a real site deployment covering 8000 km2 in Northern Denmark. Using the existing Telenor cellular site grid it is shown that the four technologies have more than 99%outdoor coverage, while GPRS is challenged for indoor coverage. Furthermore, the study analyzes the capacity of the four technologies assuming a traffic growth from 1 to 10 IoT device per user.

Uploaded by

André Kaio
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
0% found this document useful (0 votes)
100 views5 pages

Coverage and Capacity Analysis of Sigfox - Lora - Nbiot

Abstract—In this paper the coverage and capacity of SigFox, LoRa, GPRS, and NB-IoT is compared using a real site deployment covering 8000 km2 in Northern Denmark. Using the existing Telenor cellular site grid it is shown that the four technologies have more than 99%outdoor coverage, while GPRS is challenged for indoor coverage. Furthermore, the study analyzes the capacity of the four technologies assuming a traffic growth from 1 to 10 IoT device per user.

Uploaded by

André Kaio
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 5

Coverage and Capacity Analysis of Sigfox, LoRa,

GPRS, and NB-IoT


Benny Vejlgaard1 , Mads Lauridsen1 , Huan Nguyen1 , István Z. Kovács2 , Preben Mogensen1,2 , Mads Sørensen3
1
Dept. of Electronic Systems, Aalborg University, Denmark 2 Nokia Bell Labs, Aalborg 3
Telenor Danmark, Aalborg
[email protected]

Abstract—In this paper the coverage and capacity of SigFox,


LoRa, GPRS, and NB-IoT is compared using a real site deploy-
ment covering 8000 km2 in Northern Denmark. Using the existing
Telenor cellular site grid it is shown that the four technologies
have more than 99 % outdoor coverage, while GPRS is challenged
for indoor coverage. Furthermore, the study analyzes the capacity
of the four technologies assuming a traffic growth from 1 to 10
IoT device per user. The conclusion is that the 95 %-tile uplink
failure rate for outdoor users is below 5 % for all technologies.
For indoor users only NB-IoT provides uplink and downlink
connectivity with less than 5 % failure rate, while SigFox is able
to provide an unacknowledged uplink data service with about
12 % failure rate. Both GPRS and LoRa struggle to provide
sufficient indoor coverage and capacity.

I. I NTRODUCTION
According to Cisco the Internet of Things (IoT) may result
in a combined increased revenue and lower costs of more than
14 trillion USD from 2013 to 2022 [1]. Therefore, numerous Fig. 1. Site deployment in Telenors sub GHz network covering 8000 km2.
network technologies have been developed to provide wireless
connectivity for the sensors and actuators that constitute the work comparing the performance of LoRa, Sigfox, NB-IoT
IoT. The technologies focus on providing scalability, extended and GPRS. In recent work [11] we compared the coverage of
coverage, low cost, and energy efficiency for the end user the four technologies in a 8000 km2 area, and in this paper
devices, which currently amount to 6-10 billion units [1], [2]. our contribution is to build on the coverage results to model
Some IoT devices will connect using local area networks and analyze the probability of collisions and blocking, which
such as WiFi and Bluetooth, but the market for wide area corresponds to the overall system capacity.
coverage is significant. Currently GSM, and its improvements The paper is based on simulated link loss between both
GPRS and EDGE, is the main connectivity provider for wide urban and rural users and site locations, which are based on
area IoT [2]. However, operators are looking to replace the Telenor’s sub 1 GHz cellular network grid in North Jutland,
technology, which was standardized in the early 1990s [3], Denmark illustrated in Fig. 1. The link loss is compared with
with 3G and LTE. Both GSM and LTE have been updated the link budget of each technology after which the achievable
in recent 3GPP standardization releases to improve the afo- data rate and time on air is calculated. Using a simple traffic
rementioned IoT-related key performance indicators (KPIs). model the probability of uplink random access collisions and
The updates are Extended Coverage GSM, for GSM, and download blocking is then estimated.
Narrowband-IoT (NB-IoT) for LTE, [2], [4]. The NB-IoT can The paper is structured as follows; Section II provides an
be deployed in refarmed GSM carriers, but also in the guard overview of the four technologies followed by the system
band or in a single subcarrier of existing LTE deployments. level modeling in section III. Next the results are presented
In addition to the cellular technologies there are also a num- in section IV and finally the conclusion is given in section V.
ber of Low-Power Wide-Area (LPWA) network technologies,
II. T ECHNOLOGY OVERVIEW
which operate in the license free industrial, scientific, and
medial (ISM) band. Long Range (LoRa) WAN [5] and SigFox In this section the four LPWA technologies are compared
[6] are probably the two most common IoT connectivity to facilitate the analysis of their performance in the following
technologies, which benefit from access to this free spectrum. section. Table I summarizes the KPIs per technology.
The LPWA technologies are rather new, and while there are As mentioned LoRa and Sigfox are deployed in license free
studies of their individual performance such as on LoRa [7], ISM bands and this work targets a deployment in the European
[8], on Sigfox [9], and on NB-IoT and its companion eMTC 868 MHz ISM band [12]. The band regulations specify two
[10], to the best of the authors knowledge there is no academic mechanisms for sharing the spectrum; duty cycle or listen

978-1-5090-5932-4/17/$31.00 ©2017 IEEE


TABLE I
T ECHNOLOGY OVERVIEW OF THE FOUR ANALYZED I OT SOLUTIONS ; L O R A , S IGFOX , NB-I OT, AND GPRS.

LoRa Sigfox NB-IoT release 13 GPRS


UL DL UL DL UL DL UL DL
Spectrum [MHz] 863-870 863-870 868.1-868.3 869.425-869.625 832-862 791-821 890-915 935-960
Tx power [dBm] 14 14-27 14 27 23 37 33 37
Modulation Chirp spread spectrum DBPSK GFSK GMSK SC-FDMA GMSK GMSK
Bandwidth [kHz] 125 125 0.1 0.6 180 180 200 200
Max payload [bytes] 51 51 12 8 128 85 22 22
Scheduling Uplink initiated (class A) Uplink initiated Network scheduled Network scheduled
MCL [dB] 154 152 158 161 164 164 144 152

A uplink transmission is followed by two downlink receive


windows, a class B device opens extra receive windows at
scheduled times, and class C have almost continuously open
receive windows, which are only closed during transmission.
C. GPRS
The GPRS systems have been deployed for many years and
serve as the reference for LPWA technology in many markets
today. GPRS is the packet radio service built on top of GSM
Fig. 2. 868 MHz EU ISM band power and duty cycle restrictions [12]. [3]. GPRS uses GMSK modulation and is frequency division
multiplex divided into frames of 4.6 ms that are further divided
before talk. Both SigFox and LoRa use the duty cycle method, into 8 timeslots. GPRS requires a frequency reuse scheme of
whose restrictions vary within the ISM band from 0.1 % to up to 12 providing a fairly inefficient spectral density. GPRS
10 % per hour as illustrated in Fig. 2. Furthermore, the max- and NB-IoT operate in the licensed bands and are therefore
imum radiated power is between 10 and 27 dBm, depending not restricted by duty cycle or listen before talk limitations.
on the specific subband. Note that external interference in the
ISM band is not included in this study even though it has been D. NB-IoT release 13
shown to be present in urban areas [13]. The NB-IoT is an evolution of the LTE system and operates
with a carrier bandwidth of 180 kHz [2], [4], [16]. The NB-
A. Sigfox IoT carrier can be deployed within an LTE carrier, in the
SigFox [6] uses Ultra-Narrow Band (UNB) modulation with LTE guard band, or as standalone. The subcarrier bandwidth
Differential Binary Phase-Shift Keying at 100 bps (DBPSK). for NB-IoT is 15 kHz, and each device is scheduled on
In SigFox the device initiates a transmission by sending three one or more subcarriers in the uplink. Furthermore, uplink
uplink packages in sequence on three random carrier frequen- transmissions can be packed closer together by decreasing the
cies. The base station will successful receive the package even subcarrier spacing to 3.75 kHz. For further information on
if two of the transmissions are lost due to e.g. collision with NB-IoT performance refer to [10], [16].
other devices or interference from other systems using the
III. S YSTEM L EVEL M ODELING
same frequency. The duty cycle restrictions of the utilized
subband in the 868 MHz EU ISM band is 1 %. Therefore, In this section the system level modeling is described. The
a SigFox device may only transmit 36 seconds per hour. The starting point is the simulation of link loss between end-user
time on air is 6 sec [14] per package and thus the maximum devices and base stations, which is estimated per technology.
is 6 messages per hour with a payload of 4, 8, or 12 bytes. The analyzed area is the North Jutland covering 8000 km2
with 580.000 people [17]. The site locations are based on the
B. LoRa commercially deployed Telenor 2G, 3G, and 4G network. Sites
The LoRa solution consist of the LoRa physical layer with less than 2 km inter-site distance and carrier frequencies
specifications and the LoRaWAN network protocol [5], [15]. above 1 GHz have been removed. The GPRS and NB-IoT
The LoRa physical layer uses chirp spread spectrum, with simulations are made using the deployed sectorized antennas,
spreading factors from 6 to 12, and GFSK modulation to while one omni-directional antenna per site is assumed for
protect against in-band and out-band interference. LoRa can Sigfox and LoRa. The area is divided into a rural area and ten
operate in the entire 868 MHz EU ISM band but has three urban areas, which represent the ten largest cities, covering
mandatory channels; 868.10, 868.30, and 868.50 MHz. 147 km2 and housing 242.000 people. The resulting urban
Similar to Sigfox, GPRS, and NB-IoT the LoRaWAN area density is 1648 people/km2 , while it is 44 people/km2
protocol is based on a star protocol where each device com- for the 7805 km2 rural area. The rural area propagation is
municates with a base station which relays the information simulated using the Rural Macro Non-Line-of-Sight (NLOS)
to and from a central server via an IP based protocol. The model, while the urban area relies on the Urban Macro NLOS
LoRaWAN specification defines three device classes; a class model [18]. The area is divided into 100 m x100 m pixels to
TABLE II 106 7
S IMULATED TRAFFIC MODEL . LoRa data rate
NB-IoT data rate
Urban Rural GPRS data rate
6
105 SigFox data rate
Area 147 km2 7805 km2 LoRa time on air
People density 1648/ km2 44/ km2 NB-IoT time on air
5

Uplink data rate [bit/s]

Uplink time on air [s]


IoT devices/person 1 growing to 10 Sigfox time on air
Uplink traffic 10 bytes/hour/IoT device 104 GPRS time on air
4
Downlink traffic a: DL acknowledge for UL data, b: unacknowledged
3
ensure a feasible simulation runtime. For further details on the 103
system level simulation, including shadow fading, terrain map,
2
and antenna configuration refer to [11].
2
10
In the system level simulation tool all urban pixels are 1
assumed to contain a user, while only the rural pixels that
contain a postal address have a user (approximately 10 %). 101 0
During the simulation the users are assumed to be outdoor, -165 -160 -155 -150 -145 -140 -135 -130 -125 -120
Link loss [dB]
but in post-processing an outdoor-to-indoor penetration loss
Fig. 3. Mapping curves for uplink data rate and uplink time on air as a
of 10, 20, or 30 dB is added. The 10 dB represent a location function of link loss.
close to a window, 20 dB is the average indoor location, while
30 dB is for deep indoor locations e.g. in a basement. 𝑝 of zero transmissions colliding with a device’s own attempt
The traffic model is based on assigning one IoT device to and therefore resulting in a successful transmission is [20]:
each user. According to [1], [2] the number of IoT devices 𝑝 = 𝑒−2⋅𝐺 (1)
increase significantly in the coming years and therefore the
simulations include a scaling to ten IoT devices per user. The where 𝐺 is the average number of transmission attempts per
traffic per device is set to ten bytes per hour in uplink and time frame. The average number of transmissions is calculated
uniformly distributed. The cellular technologies GPRS and using the time on air per device, the number of devices per
NB-IoT automatically acknowledge any uplink data transmis- site, and the number of transmission channels per technology.
sion, while LoRa and Sigfox may not always do this due to The transmissions in downlink are scheduled from each base
duty cycle limitations. The traffic model, described in Table II, station and therefore slotted Aloha access is used, meaning
captures this by including both a downlink acknowledgment that the factor 2 is removed from eq. (1).
for uplink data and unacknowledged uplink data. Sigfox transmits the same package in three attempts on
The next step is to compare the simulated link loss with the random uplink channels and each attempt can either be re-
Maximum Coupling Loss (MCL) of each technology, given ceived successful or not. Therefore, a Sigfox uplink package
in Table I. If the MCL is exceeded the device will be out is modeled as a Bernoulli trial with a binomial distribution,
of coverage. The covered devices will experience different where the probability of a single successful transmission using
uplink data rates and time on air depending on the link loss the Aloha scheme is 𝑝. The probability 𝑃 , of receiving at least
as illustrated in Fig. 3. The NB-IoT provides the best MCL of one Sigfox transmission without collisions, is thus modeled as
164 dB, at the cost of long time on air, but also the highest data a sequence of three Bernoulli trials:
rate for good channel conditions [10]. Note GPRS is estimated
𝑃 (𝑋 > 0) = 𝑃 (𝑋 = 1) + 𝑃 (𝑋 = 2) + 𝑃 (𝑋 = 3)
to have a constant 0.5 s time on air for a 10 byte packet [19], ( )
while SigFox uses 2 s per message [14]. The LoRa [8] is 𝑛 𝑋 𝑛−𝑋
= 1 − 𝑃 (𝑋 = 0) = 1 − 𝑝 (1 − 𝑝)
simulated to be deployed using five 125 kHz channels in the 𝑋
( )
868 MHz EU ISM band with duty cycle of either 1 % or 10 %. 3 0 3−0
=1− 𝑝 (1 − 𝑝) (2)
Having determined the data rate and time on air for each 0
individual device per technology the probability of uplink where 𝑋 is the total number of collision-free transmissions
collisions can be estimated. In this study the uplink collisions from a device and 𝑛 is the number of trials.
correspond to a random access failure. The GPRS and NB-
IoT technologies are both scheduled systems and thus the IV. R ESULTS
performance depends on the blocking performance of the In this section the results are presented. First, the simulated
random access channel specified for each system. The GPRS coverage results are introduced, after which the calculated
random access channel blocking probability is calculated in collision and blocking probabilities are discussed.
[3]. The NB-IoT random access channel blocking probability
depends on the link loss and is based on [16]. On the contrary, A. Coverage
SigFox and LoRa are not scheduled systems. Instead the The coverage results, illustrated in the cumulative distribu-
Sigfox and LoRa devices transmit their uplink packets at tion function (CDF) in Fig. 4, show that all systems provide
random time and in randomly selected channels. This approach outdoor coverage with more than 99 % probability. Note that
is known as the pure Aloha access scheme. The probability the figure contains results for both urban and rural pixels. For
100 SigFox → GPRS → 1
← 70 %
NB-IoT → LoRa → 0.9
← 40 %

← 24 % 0.8
Cumulative Distribution Funciton [-]

← 16 %
0.7
10-1 ← 11 % ← 11 %

0.6

CDF
0.5 SigFox - outdoor
← 2.8 %
SigFox - indoor
0.4 LoRa, ACK - outdoor
LoRa, ACK - indoor
-2
10 Cellular - Outdoor users LoRa, UNACK - outdoor
← 0.8 % 0.3
Cellular - Indoor users, penetration loss 10 dB LoRa, UNACK - indoor
Cellular - Indoor users, penetration loss 20 dB
Cellular - Indoor users, penetration loss 30 dB 0.2 NB-IoT - outdoor
LPWA - Outdoor users NB-IoT - indoor
← 0.27 %
← 0.23 % LPWA - Indoor users, penetration loss 10 dB GPRS - outdoor
LPWA - Indoor users, penetration loss 20 dB
0.1
GPRS - indoor
LPWA - Indoor users, penetration loss 30 dB

10-3 0
-180 -170 -160 -150 -140 -130 -120 0 0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05 0.06 0.07 0.08 0.09 0.1
Minimum Link Loss [dB] UL collision propability
Fig. 4. Maximum coupling loss CDF for all locations in the analyzed area. Fig. 5. CDF of the uplink collision probability due to random access failure.
a view on the individual areas refer to [11]. 1
For indoor users experiencing 20 dB additional penetration 0.9
SigFox - outdoor
SigFox - indoor
loss the GPRS coverage is reduced to 60 %, while LoRa has LoRa, ACK - outdoor
97 %, and SigFox and NB-IoT more than 99 % coverage. In 95%tile UL failure propability 0.8 LoRa, ACK - indoor
the deep indoor case, with 30 dB additional penetration loss, LoRa, UNACK - outdoor
0.7 LoRa, UNACK - indoor
GPRS only covers about 30 % of the users while Lora covers NB-IoT - outdoor
76 %. SigFox and NB-IoT covers around 85 % and 90 % of 0.6 NB-IoT - indoor
GPRS - outdoor
the users, respectively. 0.5 GPRS - indoor
Fig. 4 illustrates that there is a few dB difference between
NB-IoT/GPRS and SigFox/LoRa in the link loss estimates. 0.4

The reason is the use of sectorized, directional antennas and 0.3


omni-directional antennas. The latter provide higher gain in
the areas, which are covered by a sectorized antenna’s side 0.2

lobe. For further discussions on this topic refer to [11]. 0.1

B. Collision & Failure Probabilities 0


1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Fig. 5 shows the uplink collision probability CDF, for one
IoT devices per user
IoT device per user only. For LoRa and Sigfox the collisions
Fig. 6. 95 %-ile of the total uplink failure due to random access collisions
occur when the devices transmit simultaneously using the Al- and coverage limitations as a function of IoT devices per user.
oha scheme, while the GPRS and NB-IoT systems experience
collisions, when the devices choose the same preamble in the observed that indoor users (20 dB penetration loss) experience
random access procedure. higher failure probabilities due to lack of coverage, and this
The LoRa unacknowledged configuration will transmit ac- is especially evident for GPRS, which has the worst coverage
cording to the worst link budget (using the highest spreading according to Fig. 4. However, GPRS has sufficient random
factor and the lowest data rate) since there is no feedback. The access capacity and therefore the failure probability is not
result is long time one air and a high collision rate. Since all affected by the increasing number of devices.
devices use the same spreading factor and data rate the outdoor When the users are outdoor LoRa supports five, Sigfox
and indoor (20 dB penetration loss) curves overlap for this eight, and NB-IoT ten devices per user with less than 1 %
configuration. The acknowledged mode for LoRa experiences combined failure rate, while GPRS devices have around 2 %
a similar problem with long time on air for the indoor failure rate mainly due to lack of coverage. The best perfor-
deployment. About 15 % of the indoor NB-IoT devices are also ming indoor solution is NB-IoT, which provides less than 4 %
estimated to have a non-zero collision probability. Finally, all failure rate for up to ten devices. Sigfox results in around 12 %
GPRS and most outdoor devices, using the other technologies, failure with little dependency on the number of devices, while
experience less than 1 % uplink collision probability. LoRa whether acknowledged or not has much higher failure
Combining the uplink collision probability with the co- rates, which also increase with the number of devices.
verage statistics results in the uplink failure probability. Fig. 6 A similar study is performed for downlink, when the uplink
shows the 95 %-ile uplink failure probabilities for the traffic traffic is acknowledged. However, while GPRS and NB-IoT
growth from one to ten IoT device per user. First of all it is are limited in uplink by the random access procedure, once the
0.25 0.25
duty cycle violations of the 868 MHz ISM band.
SigFox blocking - outdoor
LoRa can be operated in an unacknowledged mode, but

Propability of sites with duty cycle violations


SigFox blocking - indoor

0.2
LoRa blocking - outdoor
0.2
since all devices will utilize the most robust communication
LoRa blocking - indoor
settings the uplink collision probability is significant. When
95%tile blocking propability

SigFox duty cycle violation - outdoor


SigFox duty cycle violation - indoor using acknowledged mode in downlink the uplink transmission
LoRa duty cycle violation - outdoor
0.15 LoRa duty cycle violation - indoor 0.15 settings can be adjusted and the performance improves. Ne-
vertheless, LoRa does not match Sigfox in uplink performance,
but it provides lower blocking probability and duty cycle
0.1 0.1
violations in downlink, however also with worse coverage.
NB-IoT outperforms the other technologies, having an
0.05 0.05
95 %-tile uplink failure probability of less than 4 % even for
ten devices. The reasons include the best coverage and the use
of link adaptation, while a drawback is the longest time on air.
0 0 It remains to be studied how the technologies compare in
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
terms of device cost and energy consumption, which are also
IoT devices per user
Fig. 7. 95 %-ile downlink blocking probability & probability of duty cycle key performance indicators for the Internet of Things.
violations as a function of the number of IoT devices per user.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
uplink connection has been established the downlink blocking The work is partly funded by the Danish National Advanced
is not a limiting factor in this study. Therefore, the following Technology Foundation.
results only include SigFox and LoRa downlink performance R EFERENCES
in terms of blocking probability and duty cycle violations.
[1] Cisco, “Embracing the Internet of Everything,” White paper, 2013.
Fig. 7 shows the 95 %-ile blocking probability for downlink [2] Ericsson, “Cellular Networks for Massive IoT,” White paper, 2016.
(left y-axis) and the duty cycle violations (right y-axis). The [3] T. Halonen, J. Melero, and J. Garcia, GSM, GPRS and EDGE Perfor-
blocking probability is calculated as the complement of the mance: Evolution Toward 3G/UMTS. Halsted Press, 2002.
[4] Nokia, “LTE-M Optimizing LTE for the Internet of Things,” White
probability of error free transmission in eq. (1), while the duty paper, 2015.
cycle violation is based on the 𝐺 in the same equation. [5] N. Sornin and M. Luis and T. Eirich and T. Kramp and O.Hersent,
SigFox has a blocking probability of 2 % for one IoT device “LoRaWAN Specification,” 1 2015. [Online]. Available: v1.0
[6] SigFox, Accessed Feb. 3 2017. [Online]. Available:
per user, and it increases to more than 20 % for ten IoT devices https://www.sigfox.com/
per user. Note that since Sigfox uses 3x2 s per transmission [7] K. Mikhaylov, J. Petaejaejaervi, and T. Haenninen, “Analysis of Ca-
independent of link quality the outdoor and indoor curves are pacity and Scalability of the LoRa Low Power Wide Area Network
Technology,” in European Wireless, May 2016, pp. 1–6.
overlapping. The probability of having sites, which violate [8] F. Adelantado, X. Vilajosana, P. Tuset-Peiró, B. Martı́nez, and J. Melià,
the duty cycle regulation of 10 % in the high-power Sigfox “Understanding the limits of LoRaWAN,” CoRR, vol. abs/1607.08011,
downlink band, see Table I and Fig. 2, is below 1 % for two 2016. [Online]. Available: http://arxiv.org/abs/1607.08011
[9] G. Margelis, R. Piechocki, D. Kaleshi, and P. Thomas, “Low Throughput
IoT devices per user, but it approaches 15 % for ten devices. Networks for the IoT: Lessons learned from industrial implementations,”
Indoor LoRa users can use two IoT devices without excee- in IEEE World Forum on Internet of Things, Dec 2015, pp. 181–186.
ding 1 % error probability, while outdoor users can support [10] M. Lauridsen, I. Kovacs, P. Mogensen, M. Sørensen, and S. Holst,
“Coverage and Capacity Analysis of LTE-M and NB-IoT in a Rural
ten devices with downlink acknowledgment with less than 1 % Area,” in VTC Fall, 9 2016.
error probability and no duty cycle violations. For LoRa the [11] M. Lauridsen, H. Nguyen, B. Vejlgaard, I. Kovacs, P. Mogensen, and
duty cycle calculation is based on four channels with 1 % limit M. Sørensen, “Coverage comparison of GPRS, NB-IoT, LoRa, and
SigFox in a 7800 km2 area,” in VTC Spring. Accepted, 6 2017.
and one with 10 % limit. However, this is not sufficient for [12] ETSI, “Electromagnetic compatibility and Radio spectrum Matters;
the indoor LoRa users, which exceeds 5 % probability of duty Short Range Devices; Radio equipment to be used in the 25 MHz to
cycle violations for five devices per user. 1 000 MHz frequency range with power levels ranging up to 500 mW;
Part 1,” ETSI EN 300 220-1 V2.4.1, 1 2012.
V. C ONCLUSION [13] M. Lauridsen, B. Vejlgaard, I. Kovacs, H. Nguyen, and P. Mogensen,
“Interference Measurements in the European 868 MHz ISM Band with
This work analyzed the coverage and capacity for SigFox, Focus on LoRa and SigFox,” in IEEE WCNC, 3 2017.
[14] Libelium Comunicaciones Distribuidas, “Waspmote Sigfox Networking
LoRa, GPRS, and NB-IoT in a real deployment scenario Guide,” 1 2015. [Online]. Available: v4.1
covering 8000 km2 in North Jutland, Denmark. [15] Semtech, “SX1272/3/6/7/8: LoRa Modem Designers Guide,”
The four technologies provide better than 99 % outdoor AN1200.13, 7 2013.
[16] Rohde & Schwarz, “Narrowband Internet of Things,” White paper, 2016.
coverage, based on Telenor’s existing site locations. GPRS [17] Wikipedia, “Region Nordjylland,” Accessed Feb. 1 2017. [Online].
is unable to provide indoor coverage for 40 % of the users, Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North Denmark Region
while Sigfox, LoRa, and NB-IoT cover more than 95 % of the [18] 3GPP, “Further advancements for E-UTRA physical layer aspects,” TR
36.814 V9.0.0, 3 2010.
indoor users experiencing 20 dB penetration loss. [19] X. Chen and D. Goodman, “Theoretical Analysis of GPRS Throughput
Sigfox provides very good outdoor and indoor uplink perfor- and Delay,” in IEEE ICC, 6 2004.
mance with a 95 %-tile failure probability of maximum 12 %. [20] N. Abramson, “The ALOHA System: Another Alternative for Computer
Communications,” in AFIPS Fall. ACM, 1970, pp. 281–285.
However, Sigfox is limited in downlink due to blocking and

You might also like