Multi-RAT IoT -- What's to Gain? An Energy-Monitoring Platform

TL;DR

This paper presents a multi-RAT IoT platform that combines LoRaWAN, NB-IoT, and Sigfox to optimize energy efficiency and performance in environmental monitoring across diverse scenarios.

Contribution

It introduces a novel multi-RAT platform with real-world energy and performance monitoring for multiple LPWAN technologies in IoT applications.

Findings

Multi-RAT solutions can improve energy efficiency in IoT deployments.

Field measurements validate the benefits of combining different LPWANs.

Potential energy savings are demonstrated in various environmental scenarios.

Abstract

Multiple LPWANs have been rolled out to support the variety of IoT applications that are crucial to the ongoing digital transformation. These networks vary largely in terms of quality-of-service, throughput and energy-efficiency. To cover all LPWAN use-cases most optimally, multiple networks can be combined into a multiple radio access technology (multi-RAT) solution. In particular environmental monitoring in both smart city and remote landscapes. We present and share such a multi-RAT platform. To derive an accurate profile of the multi-RAT opportunities in various scenarios, in the-field network parameter are monitored. The platform collects per-packet energy-consumption, packet delivery ratio (PDR) and other parameters of LoRaWAN, NB-IoT and Sigfox. Our preliminary measurements demonstrate the validity of using a multi-RAT solution. For example, we illustrate the potential energy savings when adopting multi-RAT in various scenarios.