Range and Coexistence Analysis of Long Range Unlicensed Communication

A broad range of emerging applications require very low power, very long range yet low throughput communication. Different standards are being proposed to meet these novel requirements. In this paper, the technical differences between a wideband spread spectrum (LoRa-like) and an ultra narrowband (Sigfox-like) network will be explained and evaluated. On the physical layer, simulation results show that an ultra narrowband network has a larger coverage, while wideband spread spectrum networks are less sensitive to interference. When considering the contention between nodes and interference between different networks, simulations show that adaptation of frequency and modulation is imperative for efficiently dealing with varying contention and interference in long range unlicensed networks. Depending on network load, size and distance, a device in a wideband network can send 6 times more packets to the base station when there is active rate and frequency management and an intra-technology control plane.