Low power wide area (LPWA) networks are attracting a lot of attention primarily because of their ability to offer affordable connectivity to the low-power devices distributed over very large geographical areas. In realizing the vision of the Internet of Things, LPWA technologies complement and sometimes supersede the conventional cellular and short range wireless technologies in performance for various emerging smart city and machine-to-machine applications. This review paper presents the design goals and the techniques, which different LPWA technologies exploit to offer wide-area coverage to low-power devices at the expense of low data rates. We survey several emerging LPWA technologies and the standardization activities carried out by different standards development organizations (e.g., IEEE, IETF, 3GPP, ETSI) as well as the industrial consortia built around individual LPWA technologies (e.g., LoRa Alliance, Weightless-SIG, and Dash7 alliance). We further note that LPWA technologies adopt similar approaches, thus sharing similar limitations and challenges. This paper expands on these research challenges and identifies potential directions to address them. While the proprietary LPWA technologies are already hitting the market with large nationwide roll-outs, this paper encourages an active engagement of the research community in solving problems that will shape the connectivity of tens of billions of devices in the next decade.

Low Power Wide Area Networks: An Overview

Traditional power grids are currently being transformed into smart grids (SGs). SGs feature multi-way communication among energy generation, transmission, distribution, and usage facilities. The reliable, efficient, and intelligent management of complex power systems requires integration of high-speed, reliable, and secure data information and communication technology into the SGs to monitor and regulate power generation and usage. Despite several challenges, such as trade-offs between wireless coverage and capacity as well as limited spectral resources in SGs, wireless communication is a promising SG communications technology. Cognitive radio networks (CRNs) in particular are highly promising for providing timely SG wireless communications by utilizing all available spectrum resources. We provide in this paper a comprehensive survey on the CRN communication paradigm in SGs, including the system architecture, communication network compositions, applications, and CR-based communication technologies. We highlight potential applications of CR-based SG systems. We survey CR-based spectrum sensing approaches with their major classifications. We also provide a survey on CR-based routing and MAC protocols, and describe interference mitigation schemes. We furthermore present open issues and research challenges faced by CR-based SG networks along with future directions.

Cognitive Radio for Smart Grids: Survey of Architectures, Spectrum Sensing Mechanisms, and Networking Protocols

Review: The role of communication systems in smart grids: Architectures, technical solutions and research challenges

In wireless environments, transmission and reception costs dominate system power consumption, motivating research effort on new technologies capable of reducing the footprint of the radio, paving the way for the Internet of Things. The most important challenge is to reduce power consumption when receivers are idle, the so called idle-listening cost. One approach proposes switching off the main receiver, then introduces new wake-up circuitry capable of detecting an incoming transmission, optionally discriminating the packet destination using addressing, then switching on the main radio only when required. This wake-up receiver technology represents the ultimate frontier in low power radio communication. In this paper, we present a comprehensive literature review of the research progress in wake-up radio (WuR) hardware and relevant networking software. First, we present an overview of the WuR system architecture, including challenges to hardware design and a comparison of solutions presented throughout the last decade. Next, we present various medium access control and routing protocols as well as diverse ways to exploit WuRs, both as an extension of pre-existing systems and as a new concept to manage low-power networking.

/pdf/ultra-low-power-wake-up-radios-a-hardware-and-networking-55kvi6zf2s.pdf

Ultra Low Power Wake-Up Radios: A Hardware and Networking Survey

This paper presents a comparison of the expected lifetime for Internet of Things (IoT) devices operating in several wireless networks: the IEEE 802.15.4/e, Bluetooth low energy (BLE), the IEEE 802.11 power saving mode, the IEEE 802.11ah, and in new emerging long-range technologies, such as LoRa and SIGFOX. To compare all technologies on an equal basis, we have developed an analyzer that computes the energy consumption for a given protocol based on the power required in a given state (Sleep, Idle, Tx, and Rx) and the duration of each state. We consider the case of an energy constrained node that uploads data to a sink, analyzing the physical (PHY) layer under medium access control (MAC) constraints, and assuming IPv6 traffic whenever possible. This paper considers the energy spent in retransmissions due to corrupted frames and collisions as well as the impact of imperfect clocks. The comparison shows that the BLE offers the best lifetime for all traffic intensities in its capacity range. LoRa achieves long lifetimes behind 802.15.4 and BLE for ultra low traffic intensity; SIGFOX only matches LoRa for very small data sizes. Moreover, considering the energy consumption due to retransmissions of lost data packets only decreases the lifetimes without changing their relative ranking. We believe that these comparisons will give all users of IoT technologies indications about the technology that best fits their needs from the energy consumption point of view. Our analyzer will also help IoT network designers to select the right MAC parameters to optimize the energy consumption for a given application.

https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01649135/document

Comparison of the Device Lifetime in Wireless Networks for the Internet of Things

Smart utility network (SUN) communications are an essential part of the smart grid. Major vendors realized the importance of universal standards and participated in the IEEE802.15.4g standardization effort. Due to the fact that many vendors already have proprietary solutions deployed in the field, the standardization effort was a challenge, but after three years of hard work, the IEEE802.15.4g standard published on April 28th, 2012. The publication of this standard is a first step towards establishing common and consistent communication specifications for utilities deploying smart grid technologies. This paper summaries the technical essence of the standard and how it can be used in smart utility networks.

Kuor-Hsin Chang

Papers

The IEEE 802.15.4g standard for smart metering utility networks