NB-IoT Versus LoRaWAN: An Experimental Evaluation for Industrial Applications
Open accessAbstract
Low power and long-range communications are crucial features of the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm that is becoming essential even for industrial applications. Today, the most promising long-range communication technologies are LoRaWAN and Narrow Band IoT (NB-IoT), which are driving a large IoT ecosystem. In this article, we evaluate the performance of LoRaWAN and NB-IoT with accurate in-field measurements using the same application context for a fair comparison in terms of energy efficiency, lifetime, quality of service, and coverage. The NB-IoT energy transmission is scarcely dependent on the payload length. Thus applications that can tolerate buffering and caching techniques on the node are favored. On the other hand, LoRaWAN consumes 10 × lower energy compared to NB-IoT for occasional and latency-sensitive communications, for which it enables much end-device lifetime. Finally, this paper provides design guidelines for future industrial applications with stringent requirements of long-range and low power wireless connectivity.
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In [11], multi-kilometers coverage is reached at the cost of milli-Joules per bit.
“In [4], the energy per bit reaches 42 µJ exploiting the cellular infrastructure, while in [11] the multi-kilometers coverage is reached at the cost of milli-Joules per bit.”
From Aerosense: A Self-Sustainable and Long-Range Bluetooth Wireless Sensor Node for Aerodynamic and Aeroacoustic Monitoring on Wind Turbines (2023) · cites this paper as [11]
Table I in the LoRaWAN End-Device Analysis reports energy per bit in millijoules for some data rates and payload sizes. The Quality of Service, Cost and Coverage section discusses coverage, but our copy does not establish that multi-kilometre coverage was reached at those measured energy costs. (LLM, conf=0.84)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredEnergy consumption in active and sleep mode, communication power, range and bandwidth are critical parameters in this application scenario due to the size of the turbine and the number of deployed sensors.
“Some of those are the energy consumption in active and sleep mode, the communication power, range and bandwidth [11] -all critical parameters in this application scenario due to the size of the turbine and the number of deployed sensors [3].”
From Aerosense: A Self-Sustainable and Long-Range Bluetooth Wireless Sensor Node for Aerodynamic and Aeroacoustic Monitoring on Wind Turbines (2023) · cites this paper as [11]
Wireless connectivity is one of the most relevant sources of consumption for long-range coverage.
“Previous works, like [4] and [11] show that wireless connectivity is one of the most relevant sources of consumption for long-range coverage.”
From Aerosense: A Self-Sustainable and Long-Range Bluetooth Wireless Sensor Node for Aerodynamic and Aeroacoustic Monitoring on Wind Turbines (2023) · cites this paper as [11]
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Cites
A survey on LPWA technology: LoRa and NB-IoT
Sinha, R. S., Wei, Y., & Hwang, S.-H. (2017) · ICT Express · doi:10.1016/j.icte.2017.03.004 · Cited by 1,020 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
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Polonelli, T., Muller, H., Kong, W., Fischer, R., Benini, L., & Magno, M. (2023) · IEEE Sensors Journal · doi:10.1109/jsen.2022.3224307 · Cited by 35 · see citing works
Self-citationShen, Y., He, T., Wang, Q., Zhang, J., & Wang, Y. (2022) · Frontiers in Energy Research · doi:10.3389/fenrg.2022.892066 · Cited by 10 · see citing works
- Authors
- Ballerini, M., Polonelli, T., Brunelli, D., Magno, M., & Benini, L.
- Affiliations
- University of Bologna (IT)
- University of Trento (IT)
- ETH Zurich (CH)
- Venue
- IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics
- Published
- 2020-12
- Volume
- 16
- Issue
- 12
- Pages
- 7802-7811
- ISSN
- 1551-3203 (ISSN-L)
- 1941-0050
- OpenAlex
- W3017037536
- Cited by
- 89
- References
- 1
- Citations by year
- 2026: 9 · 2025: 9 · 2024: 16 · 2023: 12 · 2022: 22 · 2021: 19 · 2020: 2
- FWCI
- 4.72
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- ieeexplore.ieee.org
- Licence
- Locations
- IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics (publishedVersion)
- Institutional Research Information System (Università degli Studi di Trento) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Archivio istituzionale della ricerca (Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Funders
- Italian Ministry for Education
- University and Research
- Dipartimenti di Eccellenza
- Office of Naval Research Global (ONRG-NICOP-N62909-19-1-2018)
- Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung (40B2-0_187087)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Electrical and Electronic Engineering › IoT Networks and Protocols
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Networks and Communications › Energy Efficient Wireless Sensor Networks
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Networks and Communications › IoT and Edge/Fog Computing
- Keywords
- NB-IoT, LoRaWAN, Industrial Internet of Things, energy efficiency, quality of service, coverage, design guidelines
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