LPWAN Base Station Functions and Manufacturers

This page describes the functions of an LPWAN Base Station within the LPWAN architecture. It also provides a list of LPWAN Base Station manufacturers or vendors.

LPWAN (Low Power Wide Area Network) is a type of wireless network designed for low power consumption, long range communication, and low bandwidth IoT/M2M applications. Typical applications include smart tracking, smart grids, smart parking solutions, smart cities initiatives, smart agriculture, and more.

The LPWAN network architecture consists of LPWAN end devices, gateways, base stations, an access network/Internet connection, and cloud servers. End devices can be categorized as short range or long range. Long range devices (utilizing technologies like LoRa and NB-Fi) directly connect with the base station. Short range devices (using technologies like Zigbee or Bluetooth) connect to the base station through an LPWAN gateway.

Popular LPWAN technologies include LoRaWAN, Sigfox, NB-IoT, CAT-M1, LTE-M, RPMA, NWave, NB-Fi, and Weightless-P.

LPWAN Base Station Functions

Here are the key functions performed by an LPWAN Base Station:

• It connects end devices or gateways on one side to the Access Network or Internet Service Provider (ISP) on the other.
• A single base station can handle a large number of devices, significantly reducing the overall network cost.
• TCP/IP is used to transport traffic between the base station and cloud servers.
• The base station handles protocol translation between IoT protocols (like MQTT and CoAP, commonly found in IoT applications) and application protocols.
• LPWAN networks typically employ a star topology.

LPWAN Base Station Manufacturers or Vendors

The following table lists different technologies and associated LPWAN base station manufacturers or vendors: