Low Throughput Networks for the IoT: Lessons Learned From Industrial Implementations

The emerging Internet of Things (IoT) is getting closer to reality every day, with standards and protocols tailored to specific applications. Although some technologies follow a 'make once, fit all' approach, others are designed for specific applications such as smart-metering where the devices are often stationary with low jitter and throughput requirements. ETSI is already working towards a new standard for such applications, having specified a Specification Group to study what they call Low Throughput Networks (LTN) and propose a communications standard. In the meantime industrial solutions have entered the market such as, among others, Sigfox's and OnRamp Wireless technologies and LoRaWAN. Although this may lead to fragmentation of the IoT, they are worth examining to gain insights from their innovations and approaches to solving problems that are common in IoT technologies, and more specifically, security, energy management and resource constrains. This paper examines the wireless technologies of LoRaWan, Sigfox and OnRamp Wireless, the emerging leaders in IoT smart metering applications. These have so far not been studied in any peer-reviewed paper. Furthermore we discuss the suitability of Low Throughput Networks for certain applications and how the above technologies would work in such scenarios.