LoRa Vs LTE: LoRa Advantages Over Cellular and Local Area Networks

Internet of Things Protocols

Local Area Network such as WiFi or Bluetooth are already established technologies. They have well established standards such as WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, Zigbee and Z-Wave. But the biggest problem with many Local Area Network / Personal Area Network is the battery consumption.

Similarly, cellular network is also one of the well-established network. But, fundamentally mobile networks like LTE was developed for better data throughput and these network are not best when it comes to power consumption.

Low Power Wide Area Network like LoRaWAN  on the other hand are built from ground-up. LoRa is developed to work only with IoT devices which needs best in class battery life.

Also, LoRa kind of network are great of IoT application as they need very minimal cost for deployment.

In contrast both LAN and Cellular network are quite expensive to deploy in a wide area, for example to cover a whole city.

Feature LoRaWAN Narrow-Band LTE Cat-1 LTE Cat-M NB-LTE
Modulation SS Chirp UNB/GSK/BPSK OFDMA OFDMA OFDMA
Rx bandwidth 500-125 kHz 100 Hz 20 MHz 20-1.4 MHz 200 KHz
Data Rate 290 bps – 50 Kbps 100 bit/sec

12 / 8 bytes max

10 Mbps 200 kbps – 1 Mbps 20 Kbps
Max output power 20 dBm 20 dBm 23 – 46 dBm 23/30 dBm 20 dBm
Battery lifetime – 2000 mAh 105 months (~9 years) 90 months (7.5 years) 18 months (1.5 years)
Link budget 154 dB 151 dB 130 dB+ 146 dB 150 dB
Security Yes No Yes Yes Yes

Next: LoRa Architecture