5G and LoRaWAN -Principle Differences

Everybody knows how 5G is disrupting the wireless sector especially giving rise to multitude of use cases for Enterprise's and industries targeting new end user experiences and generating revenue. But people frequently neglect an alternative that has been there for five years: low-range wide-area networks (LoRaWAN). In many instances, LoRaWAN can replace 5G, at least until 5G becomes available worldwide. However once 5G is understood and adopted then this technology will rule the earth's communication systems.

LoRa and LoRaWAN stand for the long-range protocol and long-range wide area network. They work on fundamental principle of LPWAN, the low-power wide-area network technology. For more on LPWAN please see https://behrtech.com/lpwan-technology/ .

LoRa or LoRaWAN can do most of the tasks done by 5G but in slow and cheaper way. The speed of LoRA ranges from few kbs to max of 47 kbps and is not suitable to transmit or watch a live streaming applications(which can be actually realised by LTE/4G by not hopping on to 5G for this use case).

However LoRa is great for other use cases like transmitting of short bursts of data mainly the telemetry data like temperature, pressure,humidity, vibration, lighting and other similar data. The reason for this is that this tech was invented for industrial sensors and was developed without the IP stack. So there is no IP over head and its related configurations, routings, updates etc. But you can contradict me by saying that 5G can be used here where large amount of data can be transmitted in short time but wait here is the catch- 5G services are costlier to deploy and integrate with CSP in places where LoRa devices can reach in adverse topographical locations on earth, for example if you want to measure the melting of the ice in northern or southern poles , you cant deploy a complete 5G network to do this which is impossible but the telemetry can be obtained by simple small LoRa enabled miniature devices embedded with sensors to measure the readings and transmit them to another devices forming a hub and eventually transmitting the data to main hub located near by. Scientists can get this data at their place of their research bases located near by and then analyse the data. But if you implement this via a complete 5G network then this doesnt work out.

Being cheaper, LoRa has a much wider range than 5G. Compare: a typical LoRa base station costs around $40 and can handle thousands of connections in a 15 km range. A 5G base station would cost $60,000, cover 2 km and enable about 1000 connections.

Since 2015, when LoRaWAN was created, a variety of LoRaWAN sensors and devices have been developed. LoRa Alliance, a non-profit association of companies that use the technology, has grown to more than 500 members.?

In 2019, British IoT satellite provider Lacuna Space set out to cover the globe with LoRaWAN. In July 2020, the company’s CTO stated that Lacuna Space was “receiving LoRaWAN messages from a sailing boat which is literally in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean”.