Abstract

LoRa refers to a digital wireless data communication technology that enables very-long-range transmissions with low power consumption. Narrowband Internet-of-Things (NB-IoT) refers to a lower power standard focusing on indoor coverage. By combining LoRa and NB-IoT technologies, a low-energy device may receive the benefit of NB-IoT throughput, while consuming an amount of power similar to LoRa. The embodiments presented herein emulate a LoRa device over a NB-IoT network using a virtual gateway.

Power usage of a device can be reduced by using LoRa and waking up NB-IoT on demand. A device may use LoRa as long as LoRa meets expected delivery ratio and timeliness criteria; the exact selection of which radio to use for each type of packet may be determined for each device by applying a machine learning profiler to the network at the beginning of the life of the device, with continuous learning thereafter.

Heterogeneous LoRa-NB-IoT devices can also improve the reliability of a transmission by using both radios in parallel and introducing a frame replication and duplicate-elimination technique for highly critical packets. Thus, a device may be protected against network outages on either side.

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Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

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