Low-power wide-area networks: opportunities, challenges, and directions

Low-Power Wide-Area Network (LPWAN) is an emerging network technology for Internet of Things (IoT) which offers long-range and wide-area communication at low-power. It thus overcomes the range limits and scalability challenges associated with traditional short range wireless sensor networks. Due to their escalating demand, LPWANs are gaining momentum, with multiple competing technologies currently being developed. Despite their promise, existing LPWAN technologies raise a number of challenges in terms of spectrum limitation, coexistence, mobility, scalability, coverage, security, and application-specific requirements which make their adoption challenging. In this paper, we identify the key opportunities of LPWAN, highlight the challenges, and show potential directions of the future research on LPWAN.